Okay, CoSo.
This week's #newsletter is a reflection from Wednesday's walkabout, when I took my grief and anger for six hours through the city, and reminded myself (if of nothing else) of all the ways in which human beings can live in service to their rich and diverse surroundings.
Even if it's too much to ask that any one life or livelihood will ever alleviate all the wounds in our hurting world, it is enough that we are here.
(CW: Genocide and suicide do come up!)
https://open.substack.com/pub/mlclark/p/walkabout-or-when-the-world-is-too
@MLClark I have my moments when I muse about suicide. It's usually triggered by a feeling that I'm unloved, taken for granted, or of course the universal constant, vengeance. "I'll kill myself! That'll show 'em!"
(The problem being, you're never around to enjoy the vengeance part.) (2/x)
Carl Sagan had a quote about how utterly meaningless each of us are to the universe, yet at the same time we are unique because another one of us can't be found anywhere else in that universe.
When I go on walkabout (usually in DC), I'm struck by this contradiction.
Each of us goes about our day as if it matters. It matters to *us* but it doesn't matter to the universe. (3/x)
I see the universe going about its business, its purpose and meaning lost to us.
Who do I think I am to figure out why the universe is doing this?
I just know that I have a finite amount of time left to enjoy the show.
Hopefully the universe won't present me with a bill on the way out ... (4/x)
@MLClark As for your struggle to finish your novel ...
I once visited Harlan Ellison's house. I saw his infamous Olympia typewriter. He refused to use a word processor, because "writing should be painful!" Um, okay.
The point being, it's not you, it's the universal constant of all writers.
I know well-accomplished writers who've been working on something for years, if not decades. It's done when you decide it's done.
Uh oh, Star Trek anecdote coming ... (5/x)
@MLClark Harlan gets accolades for "City on the Edge of Forever," but that's not his version. He disavowed it. In fact, he wrote a book about the experience.
TV runs on a clock. Harlan kept trying to perfect it, but Gene Coon told him to wrap it up, we have to go into production. Harlan's version was too expensive and had other issues. So it was taken away from him.
So unless you're under contract, finish your novel when you decide it's finished.
Fin. (6/6) 😘
Honestly, the list of things Ellison *didn't* disavow is probably shorter. 😅 Thanks for the fun example, though!
😉 I actually thought of you when I wrote "palimpsest".
"Will Stephen know this word? Well, we shall see!"
🤣 I might start making a game of this now.
NB: Tinto can also be used for red wine - and more commonly is in some regions - so it's important to get the context right.
The "take" is a funny part of language difference, too; we "have" coffee or "make" a decision in English, but you "take" (tomar) both in Spanish.
Thanks for sitting with the piece, Stephen.
@MLClark Oh, you'll win the vocabulary game. The brain leaks words as we get older. I'm in the thesaurus every day trying to remember a word on the tip of my tongue.
Here's an old KPCC article on H.E., the source of the photo ... Harlan hosted an SF talk show for years on KPFK. He was succeeded by JMS.
Oh, I didn't mean it competitively. I meant, sneak in a new word each time just for the fun of *maybe* introducing something new. Language elitism is *not* my jam.
I spent years in academese and, when there, used to play "academic bingo" with myself, noting the jargon & names students were trained to use & drop instead of learning to communicate effectively with everyone. Exclusion was often the goal, playing at knowledge elitism.
Now I code-switch the heck out of everything. :)
@MLClark Back in my law enforcement days, one of the more cerebral detectives would come into briefing and write the "word of the day" on the blackboard, challenging us to slip it into a report.
(I always won, of course.)
I'm afraid all I can slip in is spacey jargon, like nitrogren tetroxide and monomethyl hydrazine.
Or on a good day, dimethylethoxysilane. 🙄
Language is fun when it knows its place. ;)
I've always been fascinated by folks who managed to get through humanities degrees and come out prescriptivists (the sticklers for a One True Way).
A good humanities education should teach, among other things, that linguistic variation is a living museum for our shared histories, our cultures, our priorities, our conflicts, and our quirks.
Why on Earth would anyone want everyone to speak exactly the same way?
Where's the fun in that?
(Jots down "prescriptivists" ...)
"Why on Earth would anyone want everyone to speak exactly the same way? Where's the fun in that?"
That's why we have Russian. 😊
I remembered one "word of the day" from the cerebral detective -- "circumlocutious."
(Not to be confused with Cirque du Locutus ...)
Sometimes a watch commander would ask me why I used a word.
I'd reply, "Word of the day." And that was that.
I donated a thesaurus and visual dictionary to our report writing room.
@MLClark "... linguistic variation is a living museum for our shared histories, our cultures, our priorities, our conflicts, and our quirks."
True of older novels, of course, but I love watching older films to study not only the lines but the delivery of the lines. Films are a living museum too.
Lots of '60s TV shows (including Trek) were written by people who served in WW2. Their scripts reflected those experiences.
These days we get lots of terrorism stories because of 9/11.
Wholeheartedly agree. 1920s SF mags are a treat, too, because some of the so-called "hard SF" in their pages was informed by popular beliefs in mesmerism, and the power of vibrations - ideas we'd consider goofy today. Makes one wonder what in SF today will seem ridiculous tomorrow.
Also, early Twilight Zone episodes pronounce words like "robot" differently. It's remarkable to see how much has changed in just a few decades with many pronunciations.
Language is always changing. :)
@MLClark Re TZ ... I've been watching them on Paramount Plus. Several space-related episodes based on Project Mercury, Project Dyna-Soar, etc.
Sometimes I look up the air date and compare it to where current events were at the time. It's pretty clear Serling or another writer saw something in the news and ran with it.
They're simple stories by today's standards, but the writing is solid.
@MLClark Your response to grief and despair is different from mine, although (like everyone) I have my moments where I contemplate suicide.
For some reason, I accept grief as a natural part of the human mind processing a loss. I'm meant to cry, to feel wronged by the universe. So I embrace it and say, "Let's get started!"
In a way, it's a sign of sentience. I know lesser species grieve in their own way, but we make it an art form. (1/x)