Paperwork
There are two kinds of paperwork.
The first type is work that has to do with paper. Moving paper from one place to another is work. Force has been exerted over a distance; a mass of missives (a miss of massives?) has been accelerated to the height of its path and then decelerated, to appear on someone else's desk.
The second type is paperwork in the sense that delicate carving is woodwork. The Japanese call it origami, and it is considered a high art, sometimes a performing art, sometimes a visual art, sometimes something that goes beyond either.
It is possible to reconcile the two. There are arcane talents, which when properly deployed, make the first into the second.
One such talent is that of the sieve. The correct mental sieve will sort paper into useful and useless; it will then convey the former away from oneself to the area in which it is best placed, and convey the latter into the wastepaper basket.
Another such talent is that of the knife. The correct mental knife will slash excess verbiage, apply correct punctuation, and delicately alter grammar until it more closely resembles the most desirable placement of each part of written speech. Thereafter, the text is more compact, more easily understood, and less able to generate bleats, snarls and other odd noises.
The last talent I shall mention here (although you might want to correspond directly with me as to the others) is that of the oracle. The wise oracle reads the text, interprets it as necessary (or reinterprets it) to cause maximum clarity where clarity is needed in the turbidity of life, or to cause maximum confusion where confusion is necessary to sanity. In the latter case, some will never understand how this might be possible. I assure you, it is.
Take the case of the missive from a government body that ended up on my desk one day. It requested all kinds of information. I replied, "Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; the proper study of mankind is man." (This is of course the famous opening couplet of Alexander Pope's second epistle in An Essay on Man.) I duly footnoted this as: Pope (1734). Back came the reply, "How come the Pope is involved?" Mission accomplished, you might think. But sometimes, not so.
I replied, "The information required is on your own website [URL given, but suppressed here to protect the easily embarrassed]. God sees all, although man does not."
As I have said before, my mission in life is to find reason and bring it where it is needed. Truly, mission accomplished.
The first type is work that has to do with paper. Moving paper from one place to another is work. Force has been exerted over a distance; a mass of missives (a miss of massives?) has been accelerated to the height of its path and then decelerated, to appear on someone else's desk.
The second type is paperwork in the sense that delicate carving is woodwork. The Japanese call it origami, and it is considered a high art, sometimes a performing art, sometimes a visual art, sometimes something that goes beyond either.
It is possible to reconcile the two. There are arcane talents, which when properly deployed, make the first into the second.
One such talent is that of the sieve. The correct mental sieve will sort paper into useful and useless; it will then convey the former away from oneself to the area in which it is best placed, and convey the latter into the wastepaper basket.
Another such talent is that of the knife. The correct mental knife will slash excess verbiage, apply correct punctuation, and delicately alter grammar until it more closely resembles the most desirable placement of each part of written speech. Thereafter, the text is more compact, more easily understood, and less able to generate bleats, snarls and other odd noises.
The last talent I shall mention here (although you might want to correspond directly with me as to the others) is that of the oracle. The wise oracle reads the text, interprets it as necessary (or reinterprets it) to cause maximum clarity where clarity is needed in the turbidity of life, or to cause maximum confusion where confusion is necessary to sanity. In the latter case, some will never understand how this might be possible. I assure you, it is.
Take the case of the missive from a government body that ended up on my desk one day. It requested all kinds of information. I replied, "Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; the proper study of mankind is man." (This is of course the famous opening couplet of Alexander Pope's second epistle in An Essay on Man.) I duly footnoted this as: Pope (1734). Back came the reply, "How come the Pope is involved?" Mission accomplished, you might think. But sometimes, not so.
I replied, "The information required is on your own website [URL given, but suppressed here to protect the easily embarrassed]. God sees all, although man does not."
As I have said before, my mission in life is to find reason and bring it where it is needed. Truly, mission accomplished.
etched with acid at 10:58:00 pm
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