Operation [Yet to be named] Part Two: On Studentry, Part One

I deem it unwise to write about any battle at the time it is being fought, mainly because the proximity of the thing, the chaos of the combat, and the fatigue which sets itself like a plague on my body, mind and spirit, all serve to distort the sort of objectivity - the third person-ness - that I feel is important in recounting something with "the written word." However this bit of advice is matched in fervor only by my undying urge to break my own rules. It isn't without a certain sense of irony that I realize my desire to write has given birth to an intuition not to write, and in doing so rendered, or apprehended, the act of writing as both a disease and a treatment (I don't think that there is a cure). I digress long before I progress.

Lately I've been giving the question of the goal of education some thought. What is the purpose of getting an education to the student, what does a student look like after she is finished 'being' a student - how is she different, if she's been changed at all?

Earlier in the semester my conclusion was, shakily, that the goal of education was to make the student a better person. This is at once a broad and vague definition, but alludes to more than mere book learning, or vocational skill building: it has to do with someone's ability to function, to be healthier in mind and body, and to positively impact other people and society. "Good" things, right? I'm not convinced, however, and feel the urge to qualify what I mean by education, as it can be said that all of life can be an education, and it follows that everyone is a student of some sort. But I do not want to reduce my definition to simply mean the modern institution of education, namely, the university, because I fear that this reduction will lead to the inevitable conclusion that the only person who can adequately be called a student is that person who pays a disproportionate amount of money to learn a few things. This, the reader might note, is also how we define a dumb-ass.

So for the purposes of the treatment of this topic here, I'll let the formal definition of education remain nebulous, and hope that the reader infer my meanings from the context of my experiences as I relay them.

This morning, while walking up a set of stairs in the direction of the sun, the image of the word "student" was impressed upon my mind. I am a student, I thought, as I grunted up the stairs in the blinding light. What does that mean? It means the obvious: that I suffer for want of knowledge. That I dedicate resources towards the end of learning, or of at least being within an atmosphere where I can sit and think (which I like doing best of all). But WHY? WHY?!

Years ago, while on a church trip of some sort, I sat on the floor of a tour bus, towards the front, my legs dangling down the front steps (very obviously over that little yellow line you aren't suppose to cross while the bus was in motion), and watched the highway stretch out before us. I remember quite clearly a moment, while we were driving through eastern Colorado: the sun was shining brilliantly over the plains that reflected a warm golden hue, and a thick cloudy mist hung over the dark forms of the Rockies to our west. I was sitting there, elbow on knee, chin on hand, eyes on the road, and something dawned on me. From my vantage point it because very clear to me that I was supposed to spend time in my life learning. Learning what? Things? About what? My self? The world? What? Perhaps I've had a vocational vacuum chamber somewhere within my person from childhood but I remember feeling quite positive that I was suppose to do this, and I gleaned satisfaction from this experience.

Needless to say, I ignored this vocational aspiration - in the formal sense of the word - for quite awhile before reconciling myself to it. By that time I was a grown man (officially), husband (also officially) and father (results still pending just kidding).

So here I am, but why?

Jump puddles, puddle jumper! (raBt tRayLZ 2.2)

Earlier the thunder sounded like somebody was doing a bad job of moving a large piece of furniture around next door. The storm is over us now, and it rolls all the way across the sky, from our west windows over the house, to our east windows. The latter of which Estrella is lying beneath and pouting, telling me that "she wishes she could go outside and jump in the puddles." For my part I haven't really got out of this chair since I woke up, seeing as how I fell asleep at 3:30 and woke up at 7. Seven is actually a bit late for me lately. Still tired though. Soon I'll get up and make some coffee. We don't have much, but we've got coffee - and a little bit of milk and sugar to boot.



At first I thought it was cute (except not really) that kids these days were dressing like what they thought kids dressed like in the '80s, and then it really annoyed me, but then it dawned on me: aren't we in for a timely grunge revival? If you think the 80's brouhaha is bad, it's going to be really annoying when kids start wearing green cardigans and flannel shirts again. Anway that's my prediction - we're going to skip Ska this cycle which is fine, as I like my Ska-ffinity to remain relatively confidential. Already, the winds of change are blowing.



On a completely different note, I've found the amazing website of a group of architects based in Bethlehem, whose goal is to "to extend the analytical reach of our respective investigations and engage with the spatial realities of the conflict in a propositional manner. The project includes multiple ways of architectural intervention and activism and it uses architecture as a form of tactical intervention in a political process." In other words, to address the reality of colonial occupation in the West Bank through creative and critical means. I haven't had much time to peruse the site, but it's refreshing and encouraging to see the multitude of strategies and fronts on which the colonial program can be critiqued and ultimately (hopefully) dismantled.

Culled Blog Draft/ Gratuitous Tired Post #1

The words roll like an avalanche, being pushed by a vicious gravity. It isn't a sentence, it's a calamitous cavalcade, a rolling maelstrom, behind which the residue of experience is left: it is a sentence, a sizzling white wake that dissolves into the blue.

It swirls into the eddy of a paragraph and piles up against the others at the checkpoints and the margins. Eventually the story will swell and coalesce into an explosive potential.

Google search:maelstrom

Wait, What?

Once, a long, long time ago, I had what we called in prison terms, an "internet girlfriend." Shortly before meeting my wife I began chatting with a young woman whom I'd "met" online. This was when I lived in Kansas City, next to the swimming pool and the statue of St. Francis across the way with no head. I also still had the old sofa I'd inherited from my Grandma.

Once, while chatting with her online, I asked her what movie she'd gone to see earlier.

"Dude, where's my car?" came the reply.

Ummm... I typed. What?

"Dude, where's my car?" again.

I think you're getting your IMs mixed up, you must be talking to somebody else.

"No, that's the movie I went to see: Dude, Where's My Car?"

I didn't believe her that a movie existed and was called that.

Operation Dumbo Drop*

In the fall of 2006, after having worked as a carpenter for a couple years, I became acutely aware that I was in need of a change - that we, my family and I, were in need of a change. At that point I had been married for over four years, my daughter had just turned two, and I was going to be 28 years old the following spring. I perceived my life as having a certain lazy, quasi-fatalist arc to it: I had done what had come my way, trusting - loosely - that everything would work out for me in terms of stability, success, etc. Having scrutinized the narrative of my life following my graduation from high school almost ten years prior to that point (and even before), I realized that it was pointedly lacking in the personal volition department. That is, I hardly ever asserted my will to live as deliberately as I, ironically enough, always knew I wanted to live. At the close of 2006 this began to change, and I still distinctly remember waking up to a brave new world on January 1st, 2007.

After a brief but victorious skirmish with the kind folks in Admissions I was admitted as a nontraditional undergraduate transfer student at the University of Kansas, and the transition began. At the time, as I mentioned, I was building houses with a local sub-contractor in Lawrence. He agreed to let me work 3/4 time in order to begin attending classes part-time. That summer I took a course at the Edwards campus, taking advantage of the K-10 connector, and by the following Fall I was taking classes part time, having shuffled off the mantle of blue collar hard labor (at least for the time being). This was the Fall semester of 2007.

The following semester my wife and I's second child was born, a boy, and the difficulty in sustaining a successful academic career was raised a couple of notches.

At the time of this writing he is just over a year old, while his older sister is almost 4 1/2. They are used to their Papa leaving early in the morning with a bag full of books, returning to eat and play for a bit before sitting down to shuffle papers, push pens, click the keyboard and jump through the various hair-graying hoops of academic life. What is next in this story involves them even to a greater extent, and is the purpose of this series of posts: the transition from undergraduate student to graduate student, and the subsequent and impending exodus.

The reality that in a little over a year from now my family and I will be packing up and moving to a new city in order for me to continue my studies is one we've anticipated. It has always been part of the plan to see this new track through to the end, but now it seems as though it has crossed the threshold of the horizon, and is creeping ever more perceptibly towards us.

Knowing that my time here will soon be up inculcates everything with a sense of significance. I basically grew up here in Lawrence. Growing up in a small town 15 minutes northwest of here, I spent the vast majority of my teenage years haunting Mass street. I was as far west as Manhattan, Kansas, for a couple of years before I ended up in Kansas City for a couple more. Seven years ago this summer my wife and I were married and moved to Lawrence, and the rest, as they say, is history (albeit recent). As reflective pieces like this often do, I'm tempted to descend into a number of tropes that illustrate perfectly the position I find myself in, but in the process of writing this sentence I've lost it. Something about a chapter in my life coming to an end, whatever.

So in the future this series of posts will address our impending move by reflecting both on the past - my experiences at KU, my family at Liberty Hall and St. Sophia Orthodox Church, my former educational experiences, etc. - as well as the future: my search for a graduate program, the logistics of moving a family of four to an as-of-yet unknown locale in the near future, our plans, etc.

My first order of business is to give this operation a name: I was thinking "Operation Exodus" but that seemed too obvious. Then I thought "Operation Get Those Children Out of The Muddy, Muddy" but that seemed a bit much. After that I thought "Operation Dumbo Drop," but realized that was something altogether different. So as a first order of business I'm soliciting a title that will work both for the physical act of moving as well as the title of this series of posts.

Operation __________________?

tooter-pated

Unlike the over popular/rated "micro" blog site "Twitter" (where the name has no material relation to what you do there), my new site "Tooter.com" will be a social networking site where users can document when and where they pass gas. This especially comes in handy if you have an iPhone, because sometimes you fart when you're not at your computer, but you always have your cell phone on your person at all times. Future plans include a quick-code system to easily document your toots' musicality, olfactory quality, etc. Hopes for the site's popularity are high, with designers anticipating spontaneous "Toot-ups" to begin forming in cramped spaces across the country.

EPIC WIN.

New developments concerning the so-called "robber's council" of the lately formed Ad Hoc Committee on the Formation of Great Ideas - a sub-committee of the slightly less lately formed Pan-handle-nic Society, which is itself a standing committee of the even soer-called Shadow Citizenry, a nebulous hodge podge of people who are actually only thoughts in my brain that refuse to sit down:

WHEREAS, the formation of a club whose primary focus is the appreciation of Epic poetry and it's recitation, re-enactment (to a reasonable degree), and general ethos, and

WHEREAS a pitifully small number of opportunities to don a wooden sword tucked into one's belt whilst reciting epic poetry with a small group of comrades exist for the bettering of our young(ish) people and the lifting up of our women-folk,

BE IT HEREBY EXCLAIMED WITH UTMOST ENTHUSIASM that the formation of a club whose primary goal is the above stated recitation of appreciated classic epic poems and whose secondary goal is to wear wooden swords in our belts and/or belt loops, waving them around at befitted and/or spontaneous instances during the recitation of the text - like, say, during a battle or nefarious murder - be undertaken as soon as possible.

So let it be written, so let it be done, so say we all, sew, a needle pulling thread, la, a note to follow sew, etc.

Help Yourself.

The gentle stereo sound of library patrons snoring, the constant mild white-noise rush of the air conditioning. In honor of "National Library Workers Day" a gallon of Ocean Spray Light Cranberry has been set out on one end of the long table in the northwest corner of the third floor of Watson, with two stacks of cups and a stack of green napkins and a handwritten sign that says "Help Yourself." On the door another sign reads "No food or drink in the library." I'd be conflicted if I weren't so thirsty.

Presidential Skepticism

I've been skeptical - okay, critical - of the president since before he was our president. One of the things I was not crit/skeptical about concerning him was his allegedly dower appearance. I can remember commentators constantly nagging on why the man never smiled, whether or not he was too serious, was he too dispassionate, removed, robot-like? That was probably the only thing I really liked about him, besides the fact that he's black. Today, however, something occurred to me. Picture after picture of the president in Europe for the G20 conference showed me a side of the man I hadn't known through pictures before. It took me awhile to figure out what it was, but then it hit me:




DUDE. What are you smiling about? Seriously: what is going on? You're at the G20 while the world is on the verge of economic meltdown. Something is going on behind the scenes. What is it? Is he excited to see Big Ben? The Tower of London? Was Tea-Time really so amazing?

It was interesting, though, to see all the old country people flock around him for photos:



Now that I think about it, I know why Barack is smiling: he's thinking Dude, I totally own all these white people.

"The Sequel of Today Unsolders Us All"

I grew up with King Arthur, not literally - that's impossible silly! I grew up reading King Arthur stories of all sorts. Tennyson's "The Passing of Arthur" was and continues to be as monumental to me as the passing of Superman in the summer of 1992.

Quote of the Day:

"I found Him in the shining of the stars,
I marked Him in the flowering of His fields,
But in His ways with men I find Him not.
I waged His wars, and now I pass and die...

I know not what I am,
nor whence I am, nor whether I be King
Behold, I seem but a King among the Dead."

Challenging the Definition/ Meaning Binary

The following is the declassified version of the latest meeting of the Ad Hoc Committee for Great Ideas, as commissioned by the Shadow Citizen's Civilian Council's commission on Things To Do While We Should Be Doing Something Else.

1. The subcommittee on language discussed the altering of as many words as possible to better reflect and, if possible, perfectly reflect the word's meaning. Some candidates for improvement are as follows:

A. Old form: redundant. Adjective, meaning "characterized by verbosity or unnecessary repetition in expressing ideas." New form: reredundundantdant

B. Old form: Palindrome. Noun, meaning "a word, line, verse, number, sentence, etc., reading the same backward as forward, as Madam, I'm Adam or Poor Dan is in a droop." New form: Palindromemordnilap

C. Old form: dissonance. Noun, meaning "inharmonious or harsh sound; discord; cacophony." New form: XnGlanThscrmQN

Possible problems: the committee found that in drawing the meaning of a word closer to its form - in an attempt to obliterate the arbitrariness of sound-labels - an exponential descent into absurd bodily function words became all too tempting, therefore the word for whistle became the act of whistling, the word for burping became the act of burping, and the word for flatulence became the act of making a strawberry with one's lips and tongue. It then followed that the committee's discussion led to the question of whether or not the definition of the use of words was predicated on the a priori assumption that one had to use one's mouth to form them. If not, this would lead to a massive definition revision effort on the part of common terms like "Potty Mouth."

2. The subcommittee on the establishment of a "Ministry of Art and Advertising" discussed the possibility of using the strategy of Caption Revisionism in order to alter history, in those cases where history is in need of altering, or where it's funny. An example of this might be as follows:
"Socrates seen foolishly accepting a bet by fellow Fraternity members that he can, indeed, consume an entire gallon of Hemlock in under one hour without vomiting."

3. Finally, the subcommittee on possible future forms of government lackadaisically discussed the importance of both taxes and voting, pitting the two against each other in a battle of virtues. While it was noted that one theoretically has the right to vote and concordantly not to vote, one also theoretically does not have the right NOT to pay taxes. It followed in the discussion whether having the right to pay taxes without the right not to pay taxes suitably fulfilled the definition of "right," and the question was raised if that definition needed altered as well. Before lunch we were talking about whether or not it was taxes or votes that made a good society, and subsequently whether it was the establishment of good business or good government that should occupy our time during the next meeting.

End of Report.

As an aside or an addendum, I've also taken the time to write a new post for my Palestine blog, as well as post the second third of an old short story on this whole other blog I have. That's blogtastic!

This Might Be The Golden Assumption - rabyt traylz 2:1

What Follows: discarded snippets of a paper I've been working on all afternoon, some observatorial fodder (bracketed with asterisks), and pirated photos. LTRLY.



Why there aren't meta - car manuals: "To illustrate this, I liken it to the hypothetical counterpart in the English speaking world of the time: the sailors who brought the English to the “New World” more than likely had at least a small number of navigational documents and papers to aide them in their journey Westward. These papers illustrate the importance of “Navigation” as a thing, a tool or a practice, that aids life as a sailor. The Navigation, then, is seen to be important in part because of the documents concerning it. However, there are presumably no documents on the importance of having the documents themselves. If this were so, the realm of navigational literature would occupy a higher sphere of importance than if it weren’t."

*A girl at the "Express Scanning Station" is indicating her frustration at something (presumably technological) with arm movements too difficult to portray. She has a tattoo on her wrist that's also too difficult to see.*

"We can therefore - by searching out the teleological purpose of the story - rest easy in knowing that a good old-fashioned cross examination can be made that validates the “truth” of the story and brings us one step closer to history without turning our back on our Western empiricism."

*A library employee put out a sign that says "In need of a laptop?" because so many work stations are full. He had an odd smile on his face.*



"Why shouldn’t his narrative contain devices to achieve the goals for which he is employed? However, in our evaluation of text, as well as these specific texts, we mustn’t forget that our professed first aim is to look into the text’s nature and find its purpose. And while the aforementioned premises support a certain promotional purpose for the text ala’ Columbus’s “Letter,” it should be noted that these are historical, extra-textual sources. For propriety’s sake, I will offer up a couple of textual examples that also shore this up."

*I walked by an office in Wescoe and saw lamplight, designer glasses, rows of bookson steal shelves, an ornate scarf, people in sweaters sitting in swivel chairs, and I thought about my future.*

Please Don't Litterati

Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.
Instructions:

1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
2) Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE (as opposed to merely love)
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total at the bottom.
5) Insert photos from your favorite movie versions where you like (I added this one).

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien X+ DUH
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte X
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X+
6 The Bible X+ DOUBLE DUH
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X+
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens X+
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott X
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy *
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller *
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare *
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X+
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger X
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald*
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens*
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy X
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky X+
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll X
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame x
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X+
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne X
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery X
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding *
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert *
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley X
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck X+
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov X+ no I’m not a pervert
63 The Secret History - Donna Tart
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac X
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker X+ no I’m not Goth
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce X+
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens X+
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom X
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad X+
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery X+
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams *
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare X+
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X+
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

OMG that's like, almost 30 books! I'm so super smart. Yesssssssss!

An Almost Complete Lack of Tense Agreements Due to Children Crawling All Over Me And Making Me Tense (With A Random Graph)

I spent class periods today half in and half out of the conversation for a number of reasons: 1) I didn't get a chance to read the assignments, and feel bad about Bee Essing, 1.b) didn't want to scramble and read at least a small portion directly before or during class as I haven't the capacity for any more anxiety, 2) I had two separate other things to think about which I did, quite successfully, though I've got to say that they were't entirely independent of the class: they were stories and ideas loosely connected with the subject material we were covering, namely: Aristotle and Benjamin Franklin. The End.

Throwing Rocks at the Think Tank

Some great new ideas being considered by the ad hoc committee for great ideas, as instructed by the fledgling 4th party political party I have yet to name:

1. A shadow citizenry, to give the shadow government someone to govern.

2. A Panhandlenic Society. Originally a geographically based society, conceived during deliberations on the reunion of various East/West named states as a part of our party platform, now comprised of Panhandlers, and whose meetings will occur at the same time as the Panhellenic Society, outside on the sidewalk, so that members can ask for money as Panhellenites come and go. More on this later.

3. A public relations firm for terrorists, to offset the bad job the C.I.A. is doing. The goal will be to give the citizenry, both shadow and actual, a constant visage on which to displace discontent (or place discontent, or displace content, etc.). Its strategy will involve a highly complex and leaderless network of blogs, the cornerstone of which will be the forthcoming new and improved Osama Bin Laden blog entitled Osama been Bloggin'. Again, more on this later.

5th Level Grecian Philosopher beats your Mountain Gnome Card

I've found a new spot to sit and read on campus. I won't tell you where it is, but I will tell you that it has got large windows that let in plenty of light, and is relatively quiet. I almost wish I would have started going there before the snowy season was over so I could sit in one of the windows and watch it.

We've recently blasted through sections of Plato's Republic in my Western Civilization class; I sat in one of the big windows reading it this morning. I am intrigued by it, for a number of reasons: 1) I'm fascinated at what seems to be the Grecian idea of "good" prior to Socratic/Platonic thought, 2) I'm surprised at all of the little instances where Plato's nuanced observations about human nature (via the character of Socrates) resonate with a sort of timely timelessness - you know: how it seems as though the characters are remarking about folks today, in the modern world. And 3) it seems as though Socrates and all of his nerdy smart-friends sitting around dreaming up an ideal city are the archetypical forum of D&D types, sitting around arguing about the lineage of 12th level Elfin clerics and such. Somehow. Also somehow I'm excited about reading Aristotle next.

Culled Blog Draft/ Gratuitous Tired Post #1

The words roll like an avalanche, being pushed by a vicious gravity, at the forefront of which is the narrative of our lives. It isn't a sentence, it's a calamitous cavalcade, a rolling maelstrom, behind which the residue of experience is left: it is a sentence, a sizzling white wake that dissolves into the blue.

It swirls into the eddy of a paragraph and piles up against the others at the checkpoints and the margins. Eventually the story will swell and coalesce into an explosive potential.

Google search:maelstrom