The Trick of Writing

The auditory, and even visual, one-liner. The motto. The blurb. The trade mark phrase that "things go better with". People are working on their "language" skills. We look "it" up, and depend on "how you define it". Every commercial, a tidal wave which hunts you down and not content to find you, uproots and sells you. Every political wand, a spin-meister's spell. Every emotional outburst, an evolutionary scream for survival.

And all of this, all of "it", is manipulation. A trick. Every word is a haiku for a book for a colloseum for a universe for a god-packed Court of opinion. An under-hatted trick. Is there any REAL thing in a Word? Is there any REAL thing?

We obscure the dark with the light of words. We illuminate the ventilated with the blanket of vocabulary. Between the speaker and the speak-easy, a peep-hole of communication, of explosion, of re-birth, of coming out of the Cave in order to get drunk. The quarks and leptons of Nature are staggering into each others' charmed particulars.

All of this noise, filling up the broad-spectrum of analog digital dividings, and not a drop to think. So little time in an eternity of blink and bling. Between the ego and the cosmo, a kind of stuttering. All of this noise.

Has it been said already? Too much? Or not enough. Or?

It is true. This language is the boa of our constriction, and the bird of our release. Clad in scales and feathers, it haunts and liberates out thoughts. Positioned nowhere, released forever. Nos habebit humus, stardust. Like nothing so much as a metaphor.

Theme: To screed or not to screed; why, why not?

TO NOT WRITE:

1. Great Ones do not write
For example, Jesus, Buddha, Socrates.
The more recent religious leaders who
appear to have written certain texts,
actually have an accepted tradition
to the contrary: Mohammad, Smith.

In Mohammad's case, the Quran was
dictated by him to women who could write.
He said he received the revelations
directly from the angel Gabriel.

In the case of Joseph Smith, the
Book of Mormon (1830) was a compilation of
of many ancient prophets, abridged by a
prophet historian named Mormon,
supplemented by his son Moroni (421 AD),
and revealed to Smith through translation
by two stones (the Urim and Thummim).

2. Look at the numbers. Scholars were already
at their limit in Gutenberg's day. Now, with
miles of books/writings pouring in DAILY...it
is obvious there is no great need for more.
Few can apply knowledge; few have ever
been much improved by reading of morals.
The engine of improvement has been compilations
of Science and How To Books. And it's a
bit late in the day to mark your contribution
to this deluge.

3.

TO WRITE:

1. The small and unaccomplished do not write.
As for the Great Ones who supposedly did not
write, SOMEBODY next to the Great Ones,
DID write. And it is implausible, however
it is preached, that "oral" teachings were
somehow memorized, transcribed, or taken down.
The quality of The Written is remarkable and
invariably worthwhile to someone in some function.

2. It is RELATIVELY SAFE to read and write.
As Chesterton put it:
["The Man Who Was Thursday" (7)].

..."Between us, by the peace of God,
Such truth can now be told:
Yes, there is strength in striking root,
And good in growing old.
We have found common things at last,
And marriage and a creed,
And I may safely write it now,
And you may safely read."

3. It is wildly therapeutic; nonpareiled.

4. Writing, with the benefits of speech, but
inside the alpha recording of a Time-Machine which
allows us to Go Back, reflect; in this sense,
it may even be "progressive", enabling one
to reflect on error and improve.

5. It is certainly collegial. You get a "jury"
of comments, many of which are breath-taking
in their insight.