A Discourse on Discourse

world's edge, CPA, MST

Introduction and Very Loose Statement of Purpose

That this document should be required to set the stage for what shall follow in my future writings is both a disappointment and an admission of failure. It is not how I wished to proceed when I first conceived this project, and in all likelihood will render its completion as a unita ry text impossible. Thus the air of bitterness that shall cling to this brief essay, and doubtless to a great many that will follow, should they be written. But I am far past the point of pretending that there is anything inside me capable of doing as I originally envisioned, of constructing a gigantic, shining edifice of steel, glass and crystal. What that vision, if you will, brought me was procrastination to the point of paralysis , a strange sense of denial that what I did not work on today I would sure ly do tomorrow. And with nothing written. Or even researched in an organized fashion. Thus, the Crystal Palace is now and likely shall always be simply a phantasm. And I fervently hope that I have entered a phase of my life where reality is always in sigh t, and acceded to, or perhaps very rarely fought. Specific to these meanderings there shall be construction, but it is to be of hog-wallows or chicken coops. Or outhouses. Or to state the matter succinctly, I had originally wanted to write a book, of whi ch more shortly. This has simply proven impossible. So, I am going to carve ideas, topics and doubtless other mush from my skull into a series of short essays. Each an entity unto itself. And if I am very lucky, perhaps emerge with sufficient material for a book after all. But the odds of that happening are long, indeed. As long as blending chicken coops, hog wallows and outhouses into one structurally sound building. Or perhaps even longer.

And the Purpose?

Meaning the very loose purpose mentioned above, o f course. Quite simply each essay is going to be personal in nature, and at best of limited applicability to anyone else on the planet. In some I shall set forth some belief I have, and examine it. In others view the merits and demerits of a particular course of action. Or put my life such as it has been under a microscope in the hope of figuring out why this particular piece of flotsam has happened to wash ashore where it has. And possibly offer up a critique or two, of something utterly unrelated to m y navel gazing, though that last is doubtful. Will there, or can there be, a hunt for a wider purpose than the above? The slamming of a post into the ground, the unfurling of a banner that proclaims this or that as the capital U Universal

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capital T Truth? Extremely unlikely, and not something that will ever be deliberately sought. I simply do not have the education to scale those heights, and in all likelihood have not been blessed by Nature with the intelligence to put such education to proper use, presum ing I did have it. Looking after myself is difficult enough. And yet, as a physical being I do not exist in isolation. Forces over which I have no control, and never shall, sweep me along as indifferently as a river does a dead leaf floating on its surfac e. Perhaps within a very narrow band of action (or inaction) I am able to move slightly beyond this dead leaf motif, and change certain elements of my existence, for better or ill. These actions, or at any rate their results, may matter a great deal to me, but I foresee no way in which the river takes the slightest notice as it courses along , and coincidentally carries me with it. Yes, the above conceit is forced, yes it is couched in pompous language, and yes under certain circumstances I might even concede it goes too far. As in, I am not unaware of the potential out such a belief offers by way of excusing personal failures, failures entirely and completely my own, as due to forces beyond my control. However, I do believe in the general validity of said claim. And thus, I am forced to pay at least some attention to the state of th is river, past, present and future, simply because of how it affects or may affect my life. The difficulty shall be in figuring out what is unimportant or unrelated to me, and what is. As previously noted, I have no real plans to pursue the former, but the latter I consider personal, whatever a textbook or dictionary would offer up as the definit ion of a personal essay. Where or how or even if I can draw such lines I must defer until I run headlong into the problem. That section of the map is presently blank, with Here there be dragons scrawled across it.

Format
By and large, you re already looking at it. I like using headings; I like this font at this size for regular text, and since I do not anticipate anything stretching much beyond ten pages, see no reason to set up a separate title page. The Author s Note at the end of this article is, in substance, what I plan to graft onto the end of each of these pearls of wisdom. The footer is as I want it, if a bit on the busy side for all that. What candidly is unclear to me is how best, if at all, to include citations and/or a bibliography. Or simply to hotlink to whatever it is that is under discussion when the source is on -line, and informally throw in title and author when it is in print. I think I shall let the topic be my guide, with some having such things and others not. I m rather partial to the variant vomited up by the American Psychological Association (APA method), for no particular reason I can point to, when it comes to citations and sources, but not t he whole title page, abstract, etc., bed of Procrustes authors must lay in with the text of the paper. So, another can I am kicking down the road. As to a Table of Contents, I m presently agnostic. I might try it just to see how it looks, and if it looks helpful to keep it. But, having said that, I honestly cannot see the point to one in any document under 7,500 or even 10,000 words. And since I m skeptical I ll ever go much beyond

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that, or rather that I ll typically shimmy well under those totals, I guess it will more often not be seen than seen.

Pick a Topic, any Topic

Pure and simple: the whim of the moment shall govern what I write and when I write it. And also at what length I write about it. I thought about a book. And thought, and thought, and thought about it. And did absolutely nothing, to rehash the Introduction.

The Book That Wasn t

And since further explanation was promised, I would not wish to disappoint my vast public. First, about the only thing I managed was to come up with a title, and a rather silly title at that. Self-Enlightened Hate: A Personal Manifesto, which, silly as it is, is about as fair a statement I could make about what I had hoped would follow. Namely, that the only time I ever seem to get anything done is when overcome with self-disgust, and that this book-length essay would be applicable to me alone. I would make it available for critique on my ghost -town blog, and if anyone bothered to read it, and pointed out an error or twelve, I would politely thank them and revise as necessary. Second is the fact that there really is no second. I knew I wanted to hammer out something that stood all the clichs of the self-help genre on their collective pointy heads. I knew I had to write a great deal about suicide, both pro- and con-, and I knew I had to start the whole parade off with at least some sort of definition of my personal world -view, reflexively including a defense of it, given how out of step I seem with the rest of humanity. Oh, and the capstone would be the Enlightened bit, which, alas, is still as undefined a term to me now as it was then. In any event, I did a bit of reading, but not nearly enough. And when I sat down to write anything I had the sense that I had an entire Thanksgiving dinner (including dessert) in my mouth, and that any attempt at swallowing would either kill me or result in a stupendous spray of vomit, the likes of which had never been seen before. So I did what I always do in these situations: procrastinate and nothing. And though there may or may not have been a second, or much of one, I may be forced to concede the existence of a third. And though it was an event that had nothing to do with me personally, for some reason it mooted the whole idea of a book as being necessary. It certainly smashed any hope I might have had vis a vis a first place finish as author of the Nutjob Book of the Year 2010. Even at my absolute worst, this gentleman s book would blow anything I wrote out of the water. I am speaking of course, of Mitchell Heisman, and the 1,900 page suicide note he left behind when he scrambled his eggs in front of a crowd leaving a Yom Kippur service at H arvard. In a white tuxedo, no less. (Bet the rental place wasn t happy.) I must bow down in homage before anyone who can come up with the following title for a section of their suicide note: The

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Seditious Genius of the Spiritual Penis of Jesus . Not only is it rather catchy, it is a line of thought that would simply never have occurred to me. Phooey on a Catholic upbringing. The image of Jesus with which I am most familiar is the larger than life plaster -of-paris one that hung, and still hangs, in the church I attended while growing up. That Jesus hung on His cross with spikes through His palms (inaccurately, as I understand a typical Roman crucifixion) with blood clearly seeping around them. He also looked like He was going to starve to death before the cross did Him in. Every rib was visible, and He had a waistline little wider than His spine. He did have a weird look on His face that was a cross between smugness and agony, if such a thing is possible. So perhaps that last is a bit of childhood fancy. (I did think, well into my teenage years, that the thingy the Host is kept in [the Tabernacle?] had a picture of a unicorn on it, not a lamb. So there s certainly precedent for error.) But in my world Jesus { Penis, and Penis { Jesus, spiritual or otherwise. Whatever else that guy I saw hanging up there each Sunday was thinking about, there s just no way it could have been sex. More likely cheeseburgers. In any event, Heisman s suicide and his utterly unreadable mountain of nonsense forced me to acknowledge that just because you ve thought and written about something a great deal, this is no guarantee that you ll have gotten the matter right, or even have made a semi-coherent case for it. And since scrambling my own eggs is something I do consider, and possibly may do, I figured I d take a step back and see if there was not a better approach to the whole business. After all, when one s business takes one d own a one-way street, you better be certain you re on the right street and going the right way. At some point turning around is no longer an option. The above probably was the book s death knell, but by some bit of happenstance I also stumbled across a copy of a half-remembered essay of F. Scott Fitzgerald s, The Crack-Up. Upon re-reading, I was not impressed with the parts everyone seems to quote, ad nauseum, about plates in the pantry, good for only holding late night snacks or some such thing. No, what grabbed me by the throat and squashed it, snapped it and left me gagging for a last breath, was a brief aside Fitzgerald threw in on vitality.
I felt a certain reaction to what she said, but I am a slow-thinking man, and it occurred to me simultaneously that of all natural forces, vitality is the incommunicable one. In days when juice came into one as an article without duty, one tried to distribute it -- but always without success; to further mix metaphors, vitality never takes. You have it or you haven t it, like health or brown eyes or honor or a baritone voice. I might have asked some of it from her, neatly wrapped and ready for home cooking and digestion, but I could never have got it -- not if I d waited around for a thousand hours with the tin cup of self -pity. I could walk from her door, holding myself very carefully like cracked crockery, and go away into the world of bitterness, where I was making a home with such materials as are found there -- and quote to myself after I left her door: Ye are the salt of the earth. But if the salt hath lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted? Matthew 5:13

Comment [WE1]: This should go on edit. Not related, and too long.

I sat open-mouthed before my computer, agog. Vitality. Such a simple, stupid, primitive word. Yet also standing for an impervious shield, one that may be battered, dented, knocked down with its owner, but that will never break and never betray, in the hand s of a true master.
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Fitzgerald spoke as one who once upon a time had had such a shield, but had lain it aside deliberately, or perhaps dropped it as an extra burden when it was not needed, or possibly simply left it someplace accidentally and never really noticed the loss. And I? I believe I entered the world bereft of Vitality, agree with Fitzgerald that it can neither be communicated or shared, and see no reason that I shall exit the world with any more than I entered it. Thus to actually write a book, in the way I had hoped to, is quite simply an impossibility. Ideas may flow from me like shit from a pigpen, but be they stupid, silly, earth shattering, wonderful, mediocre or of any other hue or flavor, that is where it ends. They go no further. I can try, but I will fail. As this final realization crystallized in my skull, I realized it was time to take Self-Enlightened Hate: A User s Manual into the back yard, hands duct taped behind it, and plant two bullets into the base of its skull. And there it st ill lays a rotting corpse. With an admittedly slight chance of reviving, zombie-style. But realistically? Nothing but worm food there, move along.

So What Remains?
Living and Dying and Constipation and Balanced Checkbooks

Quite a bit, actually. I ve already alluded to suicide generally, but that topic alone is one I can slice and dice in nearly infinite ways:
y y y y

How do I define it? How do I do it, should I decide to? Why or why not do it? What affect if any, will my death have on those left behind?

And on and on. And then there can be a hand is faster than eye change of cloak, from black to white, as any two-bit carnival magician would pull it off. Stand the above bullet points on their heads and see where I am lead. Throw the ever -present monkey wrench of doubt into the construction of the (possibly) logical chain of thought that stretches from life to death. And see what happens. If there s going to be a conscious fight, or more likely a war, with self preservation as its goal, how would I go about doing THAT? And spring some harsh words upon myself, such as:
y y y y y

Am I simply too mentally ill to ever support myself? Am I a Useless Eater and can I ever cease being one? Am I a Con-artist, of the sort that can con themselves? Can I Change myself at such a fundamental that I cease being me? Just how the hell did I find myself in this stagnant oxbow anyway?

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So a few turds of biography dropped strategically, with me as both pathologist and corpse on the table. Or as patient in critical condition, should I d ecide to see what the other side of the coin looks like.
Big ol Ugly Questions

The usual. The sort that get asked and always remain unanswerable.
y y y y

Define, define, define This business of claiming to know what the future holds sensible or bullshit? What do I owe, and to whom do I know it? If I am ever put to a test, I can state with perfect calmness, indeed almost serenity, that I shall fail it, shall make the wrong choice, and will somehow be saddled with the consequences And other usual suspects: economic systems, political systems polish up my very crude metaphysics

Doubtless anything in this category will not only be unreadable, it will be stuffed to the brim with ignorance, parochialism and a mind numbing blandness. Though perhaps I ll add a dash of hot, spicy racism. Just for some flavor.

Things that amuse, bore, irritate or otherwise rouse some sort of silly emotion in me
Of course most of this sort of thing should go straight to the blog, but there are a few cases where a second look on a bit more rigorous basis might do me some good. I m not going to bother to list any topics; they ll pop out as they catch my attention.

Conclusion
Part I
I am an abysmal writer. Anyone who would pay to read anything I might write should have sucker tattooed on their forehead. Fortunately for all the suckers out there that is now and shall always remain a mere hypothetical. And yet something possibly demonic possession drives me on, gibbering like a monkey who stuck a peanut up his ass and can t r emove it. Well, whatever it is, I can merely drag myself along behind something that may border on compulsion.

- Part II
This train-wreck actually came out a bit better than I expected. It think it fairly states what s going to be going on, how it shall appear, what I consider needs addressing, first of all in my life and to a lesser degree in the world around me. And the tone taken throughout is reasonably

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representative of my writing style. I dislike the idea that someone might expect me to serve A, but instead receives a heaping plate of B, much to their surprise. H opefully I ve been descriptive enough that this will seldom happen.

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Author s Notes
Drafts, Rewrites and a Final Copy
If you see the word draft, on each page, you re loo king at one. If you see the word re -write I ve changed something. Be it fact correction, yanking a section I didn t think fit , or polishing my prose so it positively shines. If you see neither, it s done. Over. Deader than Elvis. No more changes. Not that I expect any feedback, but if by some miracle I do receive some, I ll listen to it in the first two phases, and ignore it in the last. Well, a screw up of Sally Struthers proportion not caught until the final essay might make me slap an addendum to the t hing as a separate document, but final is still gonna be final. I ll probably meander back to a posted draft a few days after it appears, tweak a few things and update it to re-write. There s no reason a re -write can t happen several times, either. As to showing edits, keeping earlier versions, etc., I m leaning toward putting up only the latest version, hiding the edits and so on. Just too much bother to do all that other crap.

About me,me, me
world's edge, CPA, MST, is obviously a nom de guerre, and though the designations following my name have absolutely nothing to do with anything, I decided to add them, I guess for what amounts to amusement purposes only. I earned them, and continue to hold them. Even if I do very little with them. I have absolutely no objection with anything I write being quoted, misquoted, linked to, made sport of, or nitpicked to death. I guess I d prefer attribution when any of this is done, but if not, well, let your conscience be your guide. Someone going the deliberately anonymous route is hardly in any position to mount a convincing defense of copyright laws. Even if they wished to jeopardize said anonymity, as I most certainly do not. I also maintain what must be the least read blog on the internet at http://selfhatetheblog.wordpress.com/, and I suppose for anyone who is not me reading entries there would be about as interesting as watching paint dry. If this sounds like a plug, I guess I d be guilty as charged if I truly cared about having readers, but in all honesty I do not . It is simply a matter that since I m linking from a page on the blog to each Scribd article, I figured I m duty bound to mention that it is out there.

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