Whale Song on the Plains

Stories come from the strangest of combination of places, events and people.  They hit me over the head sometimes as I'm walking - often times quite actually because my head is usual off pondering in the clouds.  This is a wild circle of thought that occurred to me this week:

Tornado Sirens

It is early spring and they've begun testing the tornado sirens in our city, as they do most places with a tornado warning system.  The siren blares out in thick waves of sound - not merely loud but inescapable.  This is sound you can feel rattling the pavement beneath your feet, shaking your ribcage, startling the air, stopping your heart.  You are breathing in that sound.  Unlike the eardrum-cracking call of ambulances and police cruisers, it does not fade away as trouble races down the center lane.  Growing up in Nebraska, this is typical of the spring and summer months - the worry that sudden disaster may be hurtling nearby. 

by Anthony Woods

Sirens and Whales

When I was a little girl standing my grandparents' driveway  I remember asking my mother what that horrible drone was.  She said it was a whale, perhaps out of sarcasm.  (She might have actually said "dying whale" but I doubt she would have been that mean.)  I was a gullible imaginative child and wanted to see this whale, marvelling at the idea there was an actual whale somewhere in our landlocked state.  As we drove home, I had a vivid picture in my head of a whale lying out on the plains somewhere... not exactly making the connection that if, by some strange set of events, a whale was lying out in the middle of Nebraska, it would be a very sad story.

Whale Fluke 6 October 2012, Gloucester, Mass.

 

Whales in Nebraska

The closest whales have come to Nebraska was the in the Cretaceous Period when a great north-south swath of the continent was a shallow sea called the Western Interior Seaway, stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic.  The "whales" were plesiosaurs (probably smaller than modern whales) - head of a brontosaurus and sea turtle flippers. 

By Dee Jay Morris

A Sea in Nebraska

Then it strikes me that Nebraska geology and paleontology is rich.  We had a sea!  We were underwater!  Okay, "we" weren't but the land that became our state (and Kansas, South and North Dakota, Minnesota and Texas) was underwater.  Comparing that reality to our current drought, the heat, the snow storms, the farmland, the ranches, the bison herds, the sand dunes... wow!  This storyteller is struck by the malleability of the earth beneath our feet, the fact that some day Nebraska may not look like it does now.  I don't know what the projections indicate for our geologic future, but if the Rockies continue to grow, so might our Plains.  This might become a desert or a marshland.  Someday Nebraska may have native camels (yes, camels) or saber-toothed cats (the descendents of our urban ferals?), bear dogs or a new breed of bison.  Or will there be a sea big enough for humpbacks and dolphins to swim down to greet us?

by Petter Sandell

And there will probably be tornadoes spilling across whatever version of the Plains comes to pass.  Will the whales warn us with their song? 



Smokescreen

Adventures in Logophilia, Day 194:

smokescreen

A smokescreen is a cloud of smoke created to conceal military operations from others, or a ruse designed to hide someone's real intentions or activities.  In one of the earlier episodes of The X-Files, Mulder's insider contact "Deep Throat" describes the alien crash landing at Roswell to be a smokescreen to conceal what the government really has been doing with alien technology.  There is something spooky about this.

World War Two destroyers putting up a smokescreen against the enemy (Jim Phillips)

Lissom

Adventures in Logophilia, Day 193:

lissom

Sometimes spelled lissome, this adjective means thin and easily flexed with graceful movements; lithe, limber or supple.  Lissom is an alteration of lithesome.  I remember this word describing Tinkerbell in Peter Pan - the perfect word for a weightless, airy creature with the wings of a butterfly.

I also, of course, think of ballerinas and their long, strong limbs and feet.  They may look fragile, but in fact, they're incredibly strong.

 

by sebastian ayala

Insular

Adventures in Logophilia, Day 192:

insular

dwelling or situated on an island.  This has come to mean narrow-minded, as well as isolated and detached.

a Croatian island by Sphinx

Lately, I've come to realize the value of writing in an island mind set.  This is similar to my ideas in the post on hermetic, writing in an air-tight environment, keeping the door shut and visualizing Schrodinger's cat.  "Island writing" would point not only to keeping things contained, but also separating oneself so nothing can come in.  This is a challenge in the internet age where were swamped with commentary and blurbs and tweets and informational flashes everywhere we turn.  There is also a greater pressure for writers, especially for beginning, unpublished writers such as myself, to "build our platforms" online or create a following on Twitter, as well as visiting blogs, keeping blogs, reading, reading, reading the insights of others out there in the world.  It is confusing and exhausting.  When most of the time, all I want to do is write.

I've noticed that several months on Twitter leave me feeling this way at times.  Don't worry, I'm not about to leave the community, I'm simply taking this network with a grain of salt.  When those I follow tweet about insightful blog posts or articles, I am grateful.  Those things are innocuous, helpful and encouraging.  Some people really have a knack for crafting lovely, funny or intriguing tweets.  Yet... sometimes it amounts to a lot of distracting visual noise.  Too much of a good thing: read me! read this! you should be doing this!  you never should do that!  Ahh!

Much of this might be due to my struggles with anxiety.  When tweets suddenly feel like commentary on my personal writing life, I know it's time to retreat over the moat, pull up the drawbridge and write alone and unbothered in the tower... putting some distance between myself and others until the energy is back.  Just retreat and write.  It's all good!

Insentient

Hello again!  I took an inadvertent break from delving into the depths of my logophilia collection to devote some serious time to editing and novel-building. 

Adventures in Logophilia, Day 191:

insentient

unfeeling, unconscious; incapable of understanding human things or showing sympathy; in other words, inanimate.

Does this man look insentient to you?

I have been watching Star Trek: the Next Generation for the first time in fifteen years or so.  Having spent a good deal of my childhood immersed in this world, there a few questions I find myself revisiting.  For one, I believe the one-of-a-kind android Commander Data feels a great deal more than he lets on.  I find it hard to believe that C-3PO and R2D2 are more capable of producing emotion - oftentimes irrational, biting emotion - than Data claims to.  Why?

Data is driven to understanding and becoming an acceptable participant in humanity.  We first see him whistling "Pop Goes the Weasel."  He proves himself an artist, classical musician and Shakespearean actor.  He is fascinated with Sherlock Holmes (aren't we all?).  He experiences grief many times.  Confusion and bewilderment, also.  He's been in love.  He expresses the desire to be a parent.  He owns a ginger-stripe cat named Spot - only a human would be able to embrace the irony of that.  Above all, he is a loyal member of the crew of the Enterprise, a friend to many, an enemy to few. 

And yet through all of this Data will declare that he has no emotions and is incapable of understanding love, grief, fear, humor because they (supposedly) reside outside of his original programming.  His brother Lore was the android outfitted with emotions, but he soon turned out to be the defective model prone to misanthropy and evil.  

Here's my theory.  Data was created by a human being - a human being he will refer to as "Father." He works with humans (and others) on a regular basis.  Without emotion, he'd have no drive, no curiosity, no will power to adapt, to learn or to better himself.  Without emotion, he'd reside in a closet until it's time for him to go to the bridge, would not be embraced by his crew, nor would he be a respected, trusted senior officer.  I'm not an expert on Starfleet, but would they really give such privileges to an insentient automaton?  My argument is that Data does have emotions.  The evidence is overwhelming.  He simply does not know what to do with them.  That said, he is like a child constantly learning about his world. 

Again, if 3PO can express pain, mourn, worry, spew insults, panic and whine, then Data can, too.  (Someone would argue - "hey! They're in two separate universes!" That's true. But it makes no difference to me.  I could very easily throw in a blurb about Daleks or Cybermen.)  When Data is outfitted with an "emotion chip" in the later years, it doesn't necessarily produce his emotions but allows him to experience and express them more fully... though this gets him into a great deal of trouble.

In the film Star Trek: Generations, Data goofs around with a tricorder puppet, is paralyzed with fear when Geordi is kidnapped by Klingons, expresses triumph when the crew wins a victory, and cries with joy when Spot is found alive in the wreckage of the Enterprise.  It wasn't the chip that produced these emotions.  These emotions were there all along, just buried in his android programming, waiting to come out.

So try to tell me that Data has no emotions, and you'll  be hearing from me.  He's more human than he realizes.  He just happens to be a well-made machine.  But aren't we all?

Wisdom from Oscar Wilde

The Telegraph yesterday featured an article on a recently discovered letter that Oscar Wilde wrote to a would-be writer around 1890.  It felt like he was speaking to me from the dawn of the last century:

"The best work in literature is always done by those who do not depend on it for their daily bread, and the highest form of literature, Poetry, brings no wealth to the singer... Make some sacrifice for your art and you will be repaid but ask of art to sacrifice itself for you and a bitter disappointment may come to you."

To me this sounds like: "so you're a novelist who earns her living as a receptionist? Excellent!  You're able to let your art remain art!  I know you dream of one day earning your living by your novels, but it might not be as rosy as you think.  Until then, use this time to grow as a writer and a student of language and see where it takes you.  You might go farther than you think."  Thank you, Mr. Wilde.

***

In a similar vein, author Matt Haig also had thirty pieces of encouraging wisdom to share via the Telegraph. My favorites were:

• Being published doesn't make you happy.  It just swaps your old neuroses for new ones.
• Success depends on great words and passionate people.  The words are up to you.  The people you have to pray for, and stand by them once you have them.
• Beauty breeds beauty, truth triggers truth.  The cure for writer's block is therefore to read.

Risible

Adventures in Logophilia, Day 190:

risible

having the ability or power of laughing; ludicrously funny.  Something that incites or triggers laughter.  Something worthy of laughter.  That strange moment when you feel like your life has suddenly transformed into a sitcom worthy of Seinfeld or The Office.  Happens to me all the time - if you cannot find a way to laugh in the middle of a stressful day, you'll be crying. It also makes for great comedic material.  And if you're as walking-into-walls clumsy as I am, well, there are plenty of opportunities!

laugh by matteo procopio