Remembering Things about the years I spent trying to write

I once had a professor, female, tell me that after examining all of the work I'd done for my thesis she found it curious, perhaps problematic, that all of the female objects seemed to be treated as objects rather than people. Naturally, as any good person would be, I was shocked. Since when did chairs start speaking?

I may have already used that particular joke, but that's the sort of thing that you run into when you blog 400 times over.

I once had a professor tell me that I had created one of the worst metaphors that he'd ever read. I blushed.

I had several occasions where something I'd written was critiqued in a manner that indicated it was not up to par. Strangely, given the disparate opinions in the room, I do not think that any of those classes turned out to be wrong.

When traveling in Europe it is best to do so by train. Then again, perhaps it is just best to ravel in Europe. However, that's a classical entitled bourgeoise type attitude. Perhaps the best way to travel is in your own city, in your own town, in the graveyard that overlooks the ocean or fields of dry grass. Perhaps the best way to travel is by canoe. I don't know. But that is my answer for nearly everything.

I had a professor once tell me in grad school that my essays needed a bit more emotional heft. He said that I was dodging the emotive affect by constantly providing items like comedic asides. Perhaps he was right. Or perhaps the world is just funny.

I have this idea that quotes should not be available at the quick behest of Google. That a reader should have to earn these things, dog ear pages, mumble to themselves in audible affirmation in a way that makes those around them wonder why they are such a weirdo.

"In the beginning was Alpha and the end is Omega, but somewhere between occurred Delta, which was nothing less than the arrival of man himself and his breakthrough into the daylight of language and consciousness and knowing, of happiness and sadness, of being with and being alone, of being right and wrong, of being himself and being not himself, and of being at home and being a stranger" Walker Percy.

"In Scotland, researchers were attempting to decipher the language of bees. "Whether this is just bee noise," admitted the neuroscientist leading the study, "we don't know."

When traveling to Utah it is best to stay in Castle Valley when the cottonwoods are shedding their summer bulk. Be sure to watch them fall from the sky, and to look at the stars behind them because you are not nowhere, you are there, but it is close. Be sure to romanticize the rural. There is nothing new under the sun.

In the essay that lacked footnotes I wrote a long and emotionally resonant piece. I do not think it was the lack of footnotes but rather the subject matter that gave the essays emotional heft. I have been wrong about a number of things. For a time I believed the earth to be flat and the center of the universe. For a time I believed it was good for man to be alone, and I believed that the ocean was smaller than the land, and that I was the axis on which the world spun. It's all a matter of perspective.

It is best to ride alone on the train, or in the company of a person you only know vaguely. Authenticity, performance art though it may be, is best obtained through solitude. However, since we migrated out of equatorial Africa it has been our lot to mumble at one another. That is why it is best to find a train car all to yourself, to imagine yourself to have been the first to set foot on the moon. Illusions are like the lakes and streams that pass by the cold window where your face is pressed, gone before you really have a chance to see them.