Update

Even with the six dependents of spouse and children, I attempted the life of a gypsy after moving from Cardiff-By-The-Sea a couple months ago. After only two weeks of camping the attempt failed. There have been so far too many ‘house sitting’ opportunities in residences that outdo what had been my own. As I write, I sit with windows to my left that overlook rolling hills and a meadow with a winding stream. A darker mountain ridge stands further up, backgrounded by storm clouds. We are in the mountains of Colorado, ten miles out of what is already a fairly small town. As I pause and look now, cattle roam, a green tractor mows a large field at a distance, and two horses graze nearby at the foot of the hill on which I am perched. To my front is a view of a barren hill that towers just above the house roof on which I see the three horses of this household—brown, white, gray—walking casually side by side. Two friendly dogs, at all times on this acreage somehow omnipresent, are still felt and seen in the abstract. On the way here, we passed through what a sign labeled ‘open range’, a phrase I understood only after swerving to the left of the paved road so as not to rudely disturb the cows grazing on the road’s edge and for fear that a cow’s lazy decision over what side of the street to munch could end in its instantaneous death.

For some days or some weeks I had forgotten that I ‘have a blog’. Remembering caused a faint but irremediable twinge far on the periphery of what seems my background experience of agency and personhood. Nothing remedies such feelings like swift action in the pseudo-social world of the internet and so I was not surprised by my quick resolve to provide those still checking on progress here in the Wood with something like an ‘update’. This is the strange result.

As for things more academic or otherwise philosophical or scientific or literary: ‘my book’ was simmering in a crock pot that had eventually been unplugged. The unplugging came about for a variety of reasons. I will mention one: I was finding non-fiction too meager for my purposes and I had no alternative set of tools in my pouch. Then, around January, independent of any book writing efforts or plans, I began reading fiction. I first read Melville’s Moby Dick for no specific reason I am aware of outside of having a copy at hand; yet a number of classics later, I still consider Moby Dick to be my favorite, and more than a favorite; I consider the work sui generis. I then read Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. By the time I was half way through with this second classic a thought flashed: why not make my own use of the literary craft? On further thought, and a couple classics later, I determined that building from my first book attempt would require just this sort of retooling. With the art of literature, I could do almost everything I had set out to do with my first book and much more.

In March and April I invested time on mirror neurons, grounded cognition, conceptual blending, metaphor, vision, and the N400 ERP component (EEG)—not to be confused with my thoughts from last year. By June I switched gears in my reading with the switch in living situation. While living out of a tent, I gave a start to a work of fiction. I have so far found the task sufficiently rewarding and productive. A number of chapters are close to rough draft form and the outline is fairly settled: 45 to 55 chapters for a total of 400 to 500 pages. Even with the change of genre, the title could remain the same, which has been The Kirk: Mother of War.

In order to compare notes: some of my recent reading also includes Dicken’s Tale of Two Cities and Oliver Twist, Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, Hemmingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, Yate’s Revolutionary Road, and for read-alouds to the kids: 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Journey to the Center of the Earth. I have started Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past and Tom Sawyer and Gone With The Wind (a better mix is hard to imagine, no?), and due to familial relatedness to the author, I am winding through the new thriller The Radix (written by a psychology instructor; the best thing since ’24′ and only eight bucks at a fine book store near you). Recommendations for further reading from those who are familiar with the Kirk are welcomed.

As for non-fiction, I found Burns’ Goddess of the Market (Oxford 2009) vital explanation of Rand’s secondary world of Atlas. Damasio’s Descartes’ Error, an international best seller I discovered in the footnotes of the cognitive neuroscience literature, was excellent and I have started his The Feeling of What Happens. I also began Kennaelly’s The First Word, a laymen’s guide recommended by Pinker introducing the new field of the origins of language. Curiously, Burns documents Rand’s cultish life and Kennaelly hints in this same direction for Chomsky. I am also enjoying Hitchens’ Hitch-22 (of course!), in which he curiously details his own ‘cult’ experiences in prep school. I have just now finally started to read Nietzsche—a cult all to himself—beginning with Beyond Good and Evil and the collection The Will to Power. I hope to begin the two volumes I have here of Langacker’s Cognitive Grammar.

For your ongoing internet viewing I continue to recommend Harvard Law’s The Situationist. They still ‘have a blog’ over there without question.

Without ‘job’ and homeless and still responsible for six dependents, I am now accepting donations for a trip to Washington DC, Philadelphia, NYC, MIT, and Harvard. Donors decide what I blog on during and one month after my trip (you know that’s gotta be worth big bucks). My point of departure will be Florida. After that, the plan is Miami and Key West. At any point in time I would be happy to be dropped into any contested area elsewhere in the world.

Be back later with some book excerpts and further thoughts on semantics, meaning generally construed, and the ERP N400.

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Posted by metzler on Thursday, July 22, 2010, at 3:17 pm.
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