Writing is a lot like cake

Of course you can write. If you’re reasonably smart and you paid some attention in school.

But what and how should your write?

If you want, you can write like Disney or make up heroic wizards. You can sell soap or sappy notions of romance. But if you mean to express yourself, that might be quite another matter. Then, you must risk being underappreciated – and possibly not read at all. Your thoughts and emotions and ideas may simply not be that interesting to others. What other self than your own do you have to offer?

But you can always write.

Say what you will, some words are just more palatable than others. You should give people what they think that they want if you want to increase your chances of fame – or royalties.

Simply put, you can write for acceptance or you can write for yourself. Most likely you will aim for something in between. And sometimes it turns out that if you write for yourself, some readers will want to hear what you have to say.

So if you wish to write, you get to choose. Acceptance is not to be shunned, but pandering is to be avoided unless all you really want is applause.

It would be something to express your own self and to be appreciated, too.

Kyra's neurolinguistic question

Which comes first is the wrong question. What if mind and language evolve simultaneously?

What if what we call ‘mind’ is immaterial – merely some property that emerges from the organic brain – from divided reality: matter and energy? Clearly our minds have no living presence in space and time without our bodies and specifically our brains, but what if they are an imaginary reality - like the square root of negative one is an imaginary number?

What if my mind does not exist in the way than the material universe exists? What if my words don’t exist except in my relationship to some other mind(s) – sometimes imagined? There might be a difference between the nonsensical and the immaterial, perhaps. But forget about the religious notions of God.

The question is this: What am I? If I am a ‘who,’ (let us speculate: a mind) what do I mean when express myself in words? If there is a beginning to consciousness, I don’t think that the beginning is actually the ‘word’ (language) – I think that perhaps consciousness emerges out of the universe itself from imagination. I have only an intuition of what imagination is, not a definition, but I am almost sure that the explanation is not supernatural (religious) nor is it primarily natural (scientific). I wonder if consciousness emerges from some immaterial imagination. Maybe consciousness made itself up.

I’m not making this stuff up. Wait a second… Who am I? And except for a whole lot of stuff that is not me, I’ve been making everything up along with borrowing thoughts from minds who came along before I was born. From what and when did imagination spring?

Maybe it was shrooms.  Maybe it was extraordinary sex. Maybe it was just looking night after night at the moon. What if it was a complete and random accident?

Damn, I just blew my mind again. Anybody got a match or jumper cables?

If you decide to try to answer these thoughts, Kyra, use as many words for yourself as you need to. Of course, I would listen to whatever ideas and questions you have, but I only want to read one haiku. And if you don’t have time for any of this, I completely understand. Almost everything – just a walk in the park under the moon with someone you care about, for example – is more important than answering these kinds of questions. Though still my own mind wonders.

Here’s one haiku of my own:

Under the cold moon

derelict rock and dead seas,

why, there, do we kiss?

The brain evolves in response to the environment. Free will and awareness are emergent properties. These are ideas. An egg crème and bacon and you are as real as it gets. Nothing really new here – except I care.

Anywhere might be interesting

I heard Mary, a barista at the coffee shop, once say what I think that I have said myself, once or twice before. She thinks that travelling to almost anywhere in the world might be interesting for a while. Paris was mentioned. Scotland or Spain. But here is the puzzle I would like to pose.

I find that the alley between New Hampshire and Rhode Island Streets, walking from 14^th and not farther than 13^th,  to be interesting – though my mind often wanders well ahead of my feet as I pass through it. And I haven’t sat on every bench in South Park, either. But I have met a quaint older fellow in that very picturesque park who speaks English as well as me, but he reads Goethe and Balzac in the German and the French. He can quote from out of his memory old dead poets like Wordsworth with a glint in his eye.

Now I think that I understand wanting to see the Great Wall of China or the Mediterranean Sea off the seacoast of Greece. But why do we so seldom look for what is interesting in places where you could walk to so easily without a spending a dime? Where in the world, indeed?

Going one place does not preclude the other, of course, but what – or where - do we so easily overlook and why? I could just stroll around and around my house where I live, but somehow I often end up two miles later at Aimee’s to chat with the locals and to try not to act like a tourist. And walking over the river and back sometimes surely suit’s me better than staying in my backyard. I have seen seagulls flying over the Kaw and herons and eagles. There’s a book store not unlike one in Manhattan, Kansas, where I can manage to pass a little pleasant time not finding very much in particular. They also sell postcards if you want to let your friends know what a fine time you are having. And of course I often watch unlikely people doing quite interesting things on the sidewalks. Not always that interesting, of course. But that might be true in Bangkok, too.

I really thought that Omaha was nice when I was there. I’ve actually been there twice. The bridge over the Missouri is something to see. But the wind-turned sculpture by City Hall in Lawrence still catches my eye. And, yes, I must still concede that that Golden Gate is something more than steel and orange paint.

I had enough of Ottawa for a half-day or so, but the afternoon really wasn’t a waste of my time. We picked up a souvenir in a quaint antique shop. And my point, if you can find one when you see me dipping my finger in the fountain in South Park, is that you can be sure that I think that Mary was generally right:  Almost anywhere in the world might be interesting to travel to for a while.

Good riddles often have no good answers; the obvious answer is usually wrong. This one gives me something to think about when I watch the sunset, sitting by a little garden pond next to the brick patio laid by this clever fellow a few years ago, or so he told me. He looked as if he was probably going nowhere. Or I can ponder the possibilities when I wake up from a nap in my own bed, the blue sky out my window and the cat lapping at a bowl not on Waikiki beach.

I think that I could show you something interesting, if you wanted to travel a very short distance just to see something you possibly never saw before. I can’t promise you’ll find the trash cans there as compelling as the ones in Iceland, but I’ll give you your money back if you’re not satisfied and I’ll buy you something to drink. There’s another fountain next to the Gazebo that they turn on in the spring. It’s not Autumn in New England, but the fountain is still a little quaint - the water comes from the river, though they clean it up somehow. It’s safe enough that  you can drink the water and not get Montezuma’s Revenge. You do have bend over and push a button by hand.

And you might not believe me if I tell you this coincidental fact both amazing and true: the Roosevelt fountain in South Park was first installed near this spot for horses and it’s mostly true what I say: you can lead world travelers to water, but you can’t make them think.

Tolkien said it better: All that glitters is not gold, all they that wander are not lost.

I think that I’ll go take a walk. I know this quaint, interesting, out of the way place and a woman named Mary that I would definitely cross the street for and with. But I won’t meet her in Timbuctoo. It’s not that she is not interesting enough, it’s just that it’s too damn far to walk.