I’m here in the East Village on some random Saturday in January. Winter weather’s just kicked in. I’m resentful of that. I always resent the cold when it comes, having made such good friends with the sun and all, now recessing behind gloomy clouds, snow and cool gray. I’m ok with cycling in and out of things; going away and coming back. Really, I am.
Truth is, I’ve been doing a lot of that lately: relationship; academics; friendships; myself. I walk into one of my favorite diners on the edge of Alphabet City, order breakfast, grab an orange juice, and sit with Writing Machines by N. Katherine Hayles, one of the seminal works of my thesis research. “Computer mediated communication” – that exciting yet elusive subject throws everyone for a loop, it seems, even me sometimes. This morning the loop stops for a brief moment and I’m able to clearly envision the message on page 67, the one about digital algorithms, about spaces between words, the model that sought to bridge the disconnect between print and electronic literature (communication in this instance) with the WORDIMAGE. Something I once read about speech act theory brings the understanding closer to me: there’s some deeper meaning on the page. Not the meaning of the universe or even my tiny existence in it, but something more localized, more practical and thus, more grand.
Alright, the thinking part:
We do, do and do. We don’t think enough. Sure, I find plenty of time to think about people, places and things. Where I want to be rather than here. My relationship. Registering for classes, taking care of paperwork, meeting with friends.
[Right now, I'm watching an elderly Chinese lady sift through a blue bin outside, overturning a Trader Joe's bag, dumping the contents. What does she hope she'll find? Unavoidably, an act that's elicited much thinking on my part.]
Those things I mentioned before (friends, relationship, paperwork, school), they are things to do, not necessarily things to think about. You just do them. You shouldn’t have to think about them all that much. Yet, we I spend a lot of time thinking about them.
Reading Hayles and other academics like her is far too often a lesson in futility, because I don’t think about what I read long enough. I’ll think about that when I have more time, I tell myself. When I have more time. Have more time. More time. Time. It takes time to think.
And now I just take the time and it comes. When I stop and think long enough about the things that matter, the things that are thinking and not just doing, that’s when true invention comes.
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Fascinately discussion, here, that illustrates “the anecdote of life and the aphorism of thought” (Ulmer, alt. cit. Nietzsche). I am fascinated by the idea that “objects” behave, act, or think–yes, the Modernist binary, an operating dialectic, was/is reflected there. While human beings are performing identity–”[Right now, I’m watching an elderly Chinese lady sift through a blue bin outside, overturning a Trader Joe’s bag, dumping the contents. What does she hope she’ll find? Unavoidably, an act that’s elicited much thinking on my part.]“; –I wondered about the convergence of so many other facets that enable poverty to take on a human face: branding (Trade Joe); stereotype (Chinese); gender (lady–not woman, female), etc. I am wondering why the woman sorted anything and every”thing” discarded in the “blue bin?” What socio-cultural value (taste, art, etc) motivated and informed her selection(s)? How was she dressed? What colors had she selected, and why? Hmmm…, fascinating depiction! BTW: How much time passed? Did she move? Did she take note of your eyes, your gaze, and alter her choices, revise her selections? I celebrate the opportunity to think, to sit, and to wait upon the snow advisories capturing my attention, today–Wait: When? Yesterday? To-day? –Hmm…