It’s been eight years since I posted this on Facebook in April 2014.
There’s an old Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.” I’m not sure about interesting, but I’m beginning to think we live in ridiculous times.
I watch the social media go by, and I watch the politicians do their dance, and I watch and I watch and I watch.
And the more I watch, the more I think I nailed it eight years ago.
There’s nothing wrong with the world that couldn’t be helped by a good belly laugh.
Wouldn’t it be great if someone, in the middle of a huge argument or a heated battle or a self-righteous declaration, just waved their arms and said, “Wait, wait, wait. You know what? This is ridiculous!”
I think I found my Norton Anthology of English Literature Volume 2 at Goodwill for pennies. Maybe it was a rummage sale. In either case I did not spend much money to obtain this 3,000-page behemoth. And every so often I pick it up and browse through it, like I did Sunday morning.
Fun facts I learned this time:
+ Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley were two different women, mother and daughter. Mom wrote about the rights of women in 1770, and daughter wrote Frankenstein in 1817. I had never thought about it, but whenever I saw either name I had always assumed the reference was to one woman.
+ Thomas Hardy wrote a very cool poem on the occasion of his 86th birthday.
+ I noticed an essay about “Racism in Heart of Darkness” that I’ll have to check out sometime. During an earlier foray through Norton, I found Joseph Conrad’s great essay “The Task of the Artist” which is his preface to that novel he wrote about the ship Narcissus. I wonder how modern literature professors deal with that title, anyway?
+ The main thing I learned Sunday is “The Task of the Artist” is not the only awesome essay in this book.
I settled on reading “Politics and the English Language” by George Orwell (pen name of Eric Blair), because I figured the man wrote my favorite novel about politics and how nefarious people in that field misuse the English language, so it’s a safe bet I would enjoy this essay.
And oh, dear George/Eric. I love how he writes. Here are two of the best snippets, which only hint at his main theme, which is how sloppy use of language makes people sloppy and stupid. (And of course, reducing a dense essay to less than a dozen words does it no justice.)
This would make a great meme, although when surrounded by its context it’s even more powerful:
“In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics.’ All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.”
I’m breathless. In an essay about writing clearly and precisely, those two sentences are crystal clear and undeniably precise.
Toward the end he offers six rules for clearer language, rules that every editor should consider posting next to his keyboard:
i. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
ii. Never use a long word when a short one will do.
iii. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
iv. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
v. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
vi. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.
I have now found two immortal essays while browsing Norton. I think I should browse Norton more often.
Today is the 100th day of 2022. April 10, 2022. I remember when 2022 was the far-distant future. Heck, if I lived to 2022, I’d be closing in on my 70th birthday. Are you kidding me?
Come on, I remember watching 2001: A Space Odyssey and thinking it was about the far-distant future. If you really push me, I’ll confess that I read 1984 and prayed that THAT far-distant future could be avoided. (Actually, 1984 was a pretty good year and far less totalitarian than today.)
Dwelling on what became of our vision of the far-distant future makes it feel like the years went by in a flash. But, you know, a year is a very long time.
For that matter, an hour is a long time. The other day (actually, earlier this morning as I write this) I wrote “A possible first chapter,” the 533-word blog post I posted April 7, in less than an hour. There are dozens of stories about musicians or poets who have a huge hit single and admit, “I never thought that would happen. I banged the darn thing out in 20 minutes.” There’s an idea: An album of 12 hit songs whose composers claim they wrote in 20 minutes. You could title it Four Hours of Miracles. OK, give me 20 minutes to come up with a better title.
A month is a long time. On March 10 it was still winter, the NCAA tournament field had not been selected, almost nobody knew anything about the St. Peter’s basketball team, Will Smith was known as a talented actor and gentle man, and — you get the idea. A lot happens in any given month.
Time seems to go by in an instant, until you remember where you were and who you are at the beginning of that time. We are approaching the 10th anniversary of moving into our brand new home, and it feels like it went by in a flash, until I look up and realize that the books I’ve written and/or published take up 9 inches of shelf space that would have been 2 inches in April 2012. I look out the window and see the fence we built around the back yard so the dogs could run and play without a leash or our supervision. I walk into the basement and sit down in the entertainment room or lie down in the bedroom or use the bathroom where concrete and storage area existed when we moved in. All of those things have been there for as long as I can remember, but they did not exist 10 years ago, and it occurs to me that 10 years does not “flash” by.
It feels like 100 days zipped by in an instant, but look how much has changed already. Most people in the USA didn’t give Ukraine a thought on Jan. 1. Here in Green Bay we were glibly making plans for cheering the Packers in the upcoming Super Bowl. Placed in that context, it feels like a long time ago, and it was.
It’s noon and I should stop here to feed the dogs their lunch. I think it was 11:35 that I started wondering when the 100th day of the year is, looked it up and typed the first sentence of this blog post. Do you see, now, how much you can do when you take the time?
