ceci n'est pas un post

Deadlines. Gotta file two stories today... so this will be short. I have some interesting developments.

• This story, about battling addiction, gave me an idea. An idea I will be exploring in my next post.
  
• And saving the best for last: The first guest blogger has submitted an essay meditating on what exactly "internet addiction" means, both as an affliction and a concept. That will kick off the weekend. 

 

Nook vs Kindle

As far as I'm concerned, they're interchangeable. Because as net-obsessed as I am, I still love books. Pulpy, papery, dusty, rough, writeable, stackable, lendable, bendable, heavy or flimsy but always fragrant books.

And that is all I wanted to say on this subject.

[image via Hans Mol @ ANU]

On the drive home from dinner last night

Speaking of digital creep...

AR: So you did better at tennis last night, great job.
RP: Thanks, but like I said on my Facebook status, I wish that annoying net wasn't there. That would make the game so much funner.
AR: But that wouldn't be tennis anymore.
RP: Yeah, it would be better than tennis.
AR: You should not be allowed within 50 yards of a court.
RP: I'm not listening. Go home, get on Facebook, reply to my status update, and then I'll write back. La-la-la-la.

[image via salon]

This is me waving back at you

I just noticed someone from the Ministerie Van Justitie in the Hague stopped by my site twice today. And someone from Syracuse University, too. To which I reply

Usually, traffic stats show something like "Cox Communications," i.e. the service provider. But once in a rare while, someone from an actual institution shows up. That piques my interest, naturally. In fact, any visitor who spends even a minute here piques my interest, and makes me happy. For I am, and I suspect that really we all are, a bit like this little ghost here, happiest when we are not invisible.

In real life, if someone from the Dutch Ministry of Justice or Syracuse University stopped by my house or office, I'd smile, invite him or her to sit down, make some coffee, and at the end, if I enjoyed the conversation I'd say, "Hope to see you again soon!" Unless they pretended to set me adrift in a giant mylar balloon, in which case I would call CNN and then hide in my attic.

But it's harder, online.

How does one smile or wave at a friendly stranger?

How does one glance back?

[image via Rynke]

Cut & Paste

Something remarkable happened today:

I left my computer in my car and I actually got work done for several hours, without interruptions to check email or read the latest on Huffington Post.

And I thought. It's an amazing feeling to concentrate, unhindered, for several hours. Good things happen.

My task for the day was to edit a section of the chapter I've been working on for more than a year. In this chapter, about a Baudelaire poem about memory and love called "Le Balcon," I reference an article in the NYT about memory written by Benedict Cary. "For the Brain, Remembering Is Like Reliving." It ran Sept. 5, 2008. The article talks about an advance in neuroscience: experts can now pinpoint with stunning exactitude where in the brain a memory is being summoned. The idea worked with a point I was making, it made sense, and yet it wasn't quite coming together. That's kind of how the whole chapter worked: good ideas, but no cohesive oomph.

So the chapter has been in various states of disarray for the better part of a year. I've added and cropped and prodded and sighed in exasperation. I put it down and wrote three other chapters in the meantime. Because this is the chapter that matters the most to me. I mean, Baudelaire is the dude. How could I write him off or do a half-assed job, when I've been obsessing over him since high school.

Well, after a long enough mental break, I felt it was time to pick it up again. My initial strategy would be to just reread a printout of my old draft, calmly and indifferently, like an outsider.

As I read, I found myself wanting to reorder a few pages, so I numbered them to have the original order and started playing around with the flow. Then, I started seeing breaks within pages, where a paragraph in the middle of page 11 went better at the bottom of page 3, and so on. So I cut up the pages where it made sense, and I physically restructured the chapter.

I always do this, on my computer. Highlight entire paragraphs, erase them with a swift CTRL-X and then splice them back together with CTRL-V. The problem is that on the computer, it's so easy, and so tentative, that I can come up with 7 versions of where a certain argument could go. It's noncommittal.

But with the physical process, there was a sense of finality. It was surgical. I only cut when I was sure I wanted to, because otherwise I'd have thousands of sentences fluttering around this too-air conditioned Peet's.

[image one via bibliowhining, image two via The Ed Techie]