The Shining

Halfway between the morning exam and the afternoon paper, a friend of mine inveigled me into accompanying him to the movies. Being young and pointlessly fearless, we hopped on the shuttle bus and went off to watch Jack Nicholson in The Shining. It was mind-boggling, and perhaps the reason why we then went on to do better in the latter half of our O-levels.

The horrific rush of events that pretended to be a story, the huge amounts of money Stephen King must've made off it, the icy landlocked claustrophobia of the empty hotel — all these are as nothing compared to the terror-filled career of life. Not for nothing is the original meaning of that deceptive word 'career' that of the course of a chariot (same etymology as for 'car') hurtling down the road, or that of the sun flaming out across the sky.

And suddenly, my blog is splintered into two parts — a log of random fragments (something like a chipboard stump) and what you're reading right now, the longer bits jutting out once a week like sprouts shining from the spring snow.

This Is Not A Blog

I long ago stopped thinking of what you're reading as a blog. Yes, it's a chronological record of my thoughts; no, it's not a weblog. If it were a novel, an archive, a diary, it would suck.

It's a resource, I think, in the sense that those old books I used to read were resources — books with titles like 1000 Amazing Facts or 366 Science Experiments. It's reached the point of trivia and lunacy at which you could find almost anything you wanted in here and it wouldn't necessarily represent a stable opinion from my brain.

Perhaps I should just split it up. I write stuff about the Bible, and my agnostic/atheist/retrohumanist friends think it's a waste of space. I write stuff about Atlantis, and everyone thinks that's peculiar. I write stuff about my past, and everyone thinks that's boring. I write stuff about education and get hundreds of hits a day. Haha.

Somewhere in here is my annual thread of posts on epistemology and academic writing. Somewhere pretty deeply buried, mostly. It's also one of the more popular sources for people looking for a path out of the 'Theory of Knowledge Maze'.

It's all like that, fragments. It's like the mixed jellybeans that come without a key, so that you don't know when you're going to get a flavour you don't like.

I think there probably won't be a blog here anymore, sometime within the next month or three.

Missing Days

Somebody asked me how many people read this blog. I thought for a while, and told him it must be only about 100 hits a day, and maybe only 20 regular 'customers'. He said, "So why do you bother to post something everyday?"

It was a good question. I had to think for a while.

Honestly, I think that this blog is a bit of an umbilical. It is a lifeline that connects me to my own thoughts, my own past; it is in a sense a tribute to people I have known who might no longer be in touch with me and whom I've not seen in years.

Blogging, at the beginning of its web-log identity, its genesis, was all about journalling the present. But like all things dealing in presents, it eventually becomes an archive of the past. This leads some people to close down old blogs, to delete them, to put them into eternal digital sleep.

I write stuff because I like writing stuff. And there's a lot of stuff that won't fit into my dissertation, that won't fit on birthday cards or in other things that I write. This blog is about stuff. It may not be very good stuff, but it's my stuff.

Bloggery

Over the last five years or so, a lot of people have come up to me and in one way or another asked, "So, how many blogs do you have?" The 'clever' answer is of course, "As many as I need."

But to be quite honest with those people who can't be bothered to actually take a look, I am the sole owner of very few real blogs. The one you're reading is the main one, while Bookbinding is my capsule book review blog which covers all the light fiction I've read (and some non-fiction). By now everyone ought to know about Two Ravens, my experiment in literary 'bloggery' which isn't really a blog; there's a sequel which is linked to it but incomplete because I realised that Two Ravens didn't need a sequel.

All these links are in the sidebar of this blog anyway. It doesn't take much effort to go take a look! However, some people do think I have written other stuff. And that is of course very true; you can find my now temporarily defunct Chemistry resources blog, Elemental, still out there somewhere. There's useful stuff in it, but I don't update it anymore.

There are also several poetry resources out there with one of my names on each of them. If you like poetry, go look around. My various digital incarnations go back to 1988 or so, but the older ones are very hard to track down.

Lastly, there are blogs shared with others; however, since they are professionals with busy lives and value their privacy, I'm not listing them here. A suspicious number of these are lawyers; it's good to have respected lawyers on your side, in this age of dubious information transfers.

Bloghunt

Not too long ago, one of my female colleagues told me that one of the blogs linked on this blog was a fatal mistake. I had no idea what she was talking about. I still have no idea. So I am open to suggestions. I have not deleted any of the links here (well, not for the last year or maybe more, I don't keep track of such things). Why don't you, loyal readers (especially those who read this before 6 AM local time, wow), have a good look and tell me which ones you think are fatal visions, daggers of the mind?

Direction

Today I was meditating on anomie, that quality of meaninglessness and lack of order or priority (lawlessness?) that characterises a life not worth living. It came to me that my blog, lacking a clear direction, might well have the digiliterate equivalent of anomie.

Normally, a life heavily afflicted by anomie is terminated by suicide or some other form of autolysis. In like fashion, this blog seemed slated for the Great WordPress in the Sky. But then, my hand poised to strike the mortal blow, I paused.

For there is indeed a direction to this blog. It skirts some issues, effectively creating an apron or cordon sanitaire around matters which cannot be dealt with head-on or explicitly. It meanders past some interesting oxbow lakes. It takes a remote and elliptical view of some other events. And it is home to some execrable nonsense at times. But yes, there is a direction.

This blog is convinced that humans can read truth amidst phantasm, can understand the elliptical and arcane, and apprehend the structures of the world which are hidden for political and venal reasons. And its direction is one which reveals things to those who can see.

Creative Literature

I must admit I've been reading again. It tires and exhilarates the mind and body. It's a bit like full-contact swordplay.

But my two most time-wasting link additions are bonkworld and the great F&SF blog La Explanada de Avente which introduced bonkworld to me. Wherein lies their fascination?

Well, bonkworld has weird stuff, like this amazing tool amongst others. It will take the chore out of reading Dostoevsky. If only they had one for Tolstoy... and of course, it has nifty little plays like this one, which should have been a Theory of Knowledge introduction sketch.

La Explanada de Avente, on the other hand, is pure entertainment and commentary. It's also bilingual, written by a person named Tim R Mortiss. You have to suspect such a name though. It sounds too much like this.

Behind The Curve

Argh. How could I not have known about this blog?

It's full of the most interesting bits and bytes I've seen since Guy Kawasaki and Levitt/Dubner. See for example this exposé. But the best bit of all (for now, anyway) is this gem. Eat your heart out, Sun Tzu. And lastly, it linked me to this most entertaining blog.

Sigh. The blogosphere can be a beautiful place. Or maybe not.

Bookbinding

While I was digging around, I found an old bloglet. It's where I intended to put all my book reviews. But I had a bad 2006, as everyone knows, and I actually forgot about it. Sigh.

I hope to update Bookbinding at least once a week. At least, I ought to be able to finish a book a week, or I don't think I can claim much of a life. But bookbinding is an art, and time must be taken over it - time and no small amount of care and effort.