Piecing Together The Fragments Of The Past

From fragments sifted from the dirt
We piece together what was here
An image forms, a poor mosaic;
Some details never will be shown.
The evidence of daily life—
A broken lamp, a shattered vase,
A stairway worn with countless steps,
The profile of a woman’s face—
These buried pieces, lost to time
We may discover, quite by chance
While off in search of something else—
An accident of circumstance.
So, too, it seems, with memories;
Forgotten, lost, for decades hidden
But then, while on another search
They spring to present mind, unbidden.
They feel complete, in every way,
As if no more than hours old
But how much is illusory?
It could be quite a lot, I’m told.
We reconstruct our precious past
And fill in gaps, the experts say,
To fit our present narrative
And lead to what we feel today

I found this verse—well, half of it—
I’d written several years ago;
I’ve reconstructed what I meant…
Or maybe not. We’ll never know.

Frieze fragment

Frieze fragment – image: Cuttlefish

So, yeah, I literally found the first half of this verse, in the back of a notebook I was using in Greece. I must have written it after visiting one of the many archaeological museums or digs we went to (the above image is, I believe, from Pella). The verse stopped after the word “Forgotten”, which (as you can see) is immediately after the shift from literal to metaphor, and a bit of an ironic place to have to reconstruct from. Some of the museums had pots that were considerably more filled-in than original shards; some were nearly complete. Sometimes you knew, or believed you did, exactly what the artist or crafter had in mind; other times, the effect was equal parts their imagination and your own.

Did I complete the thought I had started over 5 years ago? Probably not. Maybe. I’m a different cuttlefish than I was then.

Nike of Paeonius

Nike of Paeonius – image: Cuttlefish

Heh… if I were cruel, I’d link Schubert’s “unfinished symphony” as the autoplay music for this post.

One Letter Makes A World Of Difference

Does God Exist? The theist says
He does, but what is meant by “God”?
Belief has different forms and ways
And “theist” is a false façade—

The problem with the answer is—
Which god? The question won’t define.
It serves as a projective quiz
We each fill in the blank with “mine”.

While theists think a god exists
Which god that is, they can’t agree.
These gods can fill up endless lists
Still none of them’s the god for me.

“Agreement” seems a specious word
When treating many gods as one
Agreement? No. The thought’s absurd…
And as for me, I’ll stick with “none”.

Today’s verse is inspired by a (presumably) well-intentioned but (demonstrably) poorly executed opinion piece at the Iowa State Daily. I’d have commented there (and thus never have had reason to write the verse), but they won’t accept contributions unless a real-world name is attached. I’ve spent 5 years cultivating a pseudonym; my real name would be meaningless to them (yeah, my pseud is probably meaningless to them, but they can at least follow a trail of breadcrumbs and read here). Anyway, the piece jumps off the rails in the first three sentences:

Does God exist?

Theists believe yes. Atheists believe no.

And moves from there to equate the two sides as equally making a claim of belief.

What a difference one letter can make. What if the author had asked “Does a god exist?” With that indefinite article, the false consensus of “theists” is punctured. “Theists” is an artificial group, a strange bedfellows assortment of traditional others, competitors, and enemies, but united by not being atheists. Not by “believing in God”, as polytheists are theists too, as are a good many people who would not identify their particular god as the capitalized “God”. My goodness, the first commandment would not be necessary if all gods were one God.

And atheists are not those who don’t believe in God; they are those who don’t believe in a god. They are the privative, none-of-the-above belief category. It is not a belief, it is the “none for me, thanks” drink preference. It’s the “I don’t run” answer to “what’s your distance?”

The problems (and there are many) in the rest of the piece all fall from this initial improper stance. When you take your first compass reading, get it right; the rest of your journey depends on it.

Ironic Hyperbole

A little bit of stretching
May not leave one’s readers kvetching,
But it really is a case of “less is more”
Don’t compare a man to Hitler
If his crimes are vastly littler
Just remember what comparisons are for
If your similes are ruthless
You’ll be widely known as truthless
And despite your every effort to resist
You’ll have earned a reputation
That you like exaggeration
And your arguments will largely be dismissed

Or as Ogden Nash might have said…

Avoid overusing hyperbole
Unless you can do it superbole

In an ironically smug and annoying article, “How atheists became the most colossally smug and annoying people on the planet” (which I had to read over three times because I really truly wanted it to be intentionally ironic–I would still love for that to be the case, but I do not think it is), Brendan O’Neill engages in a bit of hyperbole–and not just in the title.

These days, barely a week passes without the emergence of yet more evidence that atheists are the most irritating people on Earth. Last week we had the spectacle of Dawkins and his slavish Twitter followers (whose adherence to Dawkins’ diktats makes those Kool-Aid-drinking Jonestown folk seem level-headed in comparison) boring on about how stupid Muslims are. This week we’ve been treated to new scientific research claiming to show that atheists are cleverer than religious people. I say scientific. I say research. It is of course neither; it’s just a pre-existing belief dolled up in rags snatched from various reports and stories. Not unlike the Bible. But that hasn’t stopped the atheistic blogosphere and Twitterati from effectively saying, “See? Told you we were brainier than you Bible-reading numbskulls.”

Now, I don’t happen to follow Dawkins on twitter, so I can’t actually speak to that first bit. I suppose it is possible that 900+ people killing themselves is rational in comparison to defending an author. I don’t really know. But yeah, that bit about the atheist blogosphere getting all egotistical is dead on. Well, you know, except for the articles critically analyzing the report, including (but certainly not limited to) FtB’s contributions by PZ and by Stephanie. The newspapers, yes, have done a bang-up job oversimplifying the paper, but not so much the “teeth-gratingly annoying” atheists.

Anyway, the rest of the article is annoying, too, but probably not as irritating as mass suicide, let alone as irritating as Dawkins’s followers apparently are, but my question is this:

Have you seen worse use of hyperbole?

369

Three hundred sixty nine. That’s the current number, as of when I got caught up with the present, a moment or two ago. I mentioned, last post, that I’m gathering up my verses in preparation for another book. This 369 verses represents the quick-and-dirty sort–anything that I just hated didn’t make the cut; muse of the week limericks did not make the cut, stuff that was clearly crap, that anyone in their right mind would have binned and been done with, but which I posted because that’s what I do, did not make the cut.

In other words, the easy bit is done.

The last volume (still available, up there in the “cuttlestuff” tab) held some 244 verses (342 pages); I expect that the next volume will be slimmer. Which means I expect to be cutting the current crop by at least a third. Which will be difficult, but maybe in the opposite direction than you might think: It is exceedingly easy for me to say “oh, that one is horrible”. If I held to the standards of my staunchest inner critic, I could easily cut the verses down to a nice round number… the roundest of numbers, in fact. It is in defiance of that inner critic that I publish the “clearly crap”… but that critic did have a point. The nature of this blog requires that my inner critic be kept in irons most of the time, exercised only rarely and briefly. This editing will be difficult, in determining which ones to keep, not which to cull.

And so the tug-of-war begins. At present, I have no idea what the final book will look like. What categories? With or without commentary? Art? (I have an idea for the cover, though, which is a big step.) Or even a title. And I especially don’t have a target date. I keep intending to have something ready for Cephalopodmas season, but that hasn’t happened in years. But… who knows?

Wish me luck?

Stephen King On God

“You’re missing the sunrises, sunsets, and stars;
You’re missing the crops, and the bees.”
You’re missing the point, Stephen King, if you think
That we’re missing the moments like these
The natural world is a beautiful place
And I find it a little bit odd
That the thing that you see when you look at the world
Is the thing you can’t see at all—God.

“I choose to believe, because everything works
In a way that suggests it’s designed.”
But the thing is that science knows better than this;
The suggestion is all in your mind.
Once the gods moved the heavens, the moon and the stars
And to some, maybe that’s how it looks
It’s fun to pretend that such forces exist
But life isn’t one of your books

“God’s plan is peculiar; there’s stuff that seems strange;
And you know, I’m beginning to doubt.”
Keep thinking; keep doubting; keep reading; keep on,
And you’ll probably figure it out.
There’s much that we know; there’s much you can read
(Though most of it isn’t in rhyme)
And maybe… a sunrise, a sunset, a star,
You could see for the very first time.

The quotes aren’t exact, but they’re actually pretty close. Stephen King has yet another book out, and NPR has an interview with him. At one point, they discussed his belief in god:

“I choose to believe it. … I mean, there’s no downside to that. If you say, ‘Well, OK, I don’t believe in God. There’s no evidence of God,’ then you’re missing the stars in the sky and you’re missing the sunrises and sunsets and you’re missing the fact that bees pollinate all these crops and keep us alive and the way that everything seems to work together. Everything is sort of built in a way that to me suggests intelligent design. But, at the same time, there’s a lot of things in life where you say to yourself, ‘Well, if this is God’s plan, it’s very peculiar,’ and you have to wonder about that guy’s personality — the big guy’s personality. And the thing is — I may have told you last time that I believe in God — what I’m saying now is I choose to believe in God, but I have serious doubts and I refuse to be pinned down to something that I said 10 or 12 years ago. I’m totally inconsistent.”

Intelligent design seems to make more sense to those whose job is designing. Engineers are more likely to be ID proponents than biologists, for instance. I suppose it only makes sense that a man who creates fictitious worlds might be prepared to believe that our own world has likewise been created.

Call Me Crazy, But…

It’s difficult, looking for just the right word,
So it’s tempting to get a bit lazy;
And critics of someone’s behavior might claim
The behavior they’re seeing is crazy.

Unless there is reason (most often, there’s not)
To suspect that the cause is insanity,
You’re dissing the mentally ill with your slight,
But the group that’s at fault is humanity

Now, why should I bother? It’s only a word—
No reason to make such a fuss—
But it matters, which people you label as them
And which ones you label as us.

Hey, maybe I’m over-reacting a bit;
Your intentions were perfectly nice
And maybe you think there’s no need to complain…
But maybe you need to think twice.

And no, I’m not telling you what prompted this.

“Foggy Bottom” Ink Review

Foggy Bottom

I purchased this ink,
To be honest, I think
For the picture adorning the bottle.
It’s a cuttle with quill,
And it gave me a thrill
In a way that–in truth–not a lot’ll.
With the ink smoothly flowing
My pleasure is showing
(I’ve never been one to be subtle)
To conclude my review
It’s a beautiful hue:
“Foggy Bottom”–approved by the Cuttle!

Ok, so the truth is, I did not purchase it; it was a gift. But other than that, I am loving this ink. It’s by the good people at Organics Studio, who also make a neat indelible black ink named for Charles Darwin. I can see why I was given this ink–just take a look at the label!

New Pens!

How does one deal with writer’s block?

I can tell you a dozen things that don’t work. Scores of things that work badly. I’m trying cure number, I dunno, three hundred seventeen. The Pilot G-2 Mini (this is not an endorsement, this is a desperate attempt to beat writer’s block, which may or may not work), in four colors: [Read more…]