Tyler Weaver's Blog, page 41

Emerson’s Turtle and The Pond Filter Death Robot

Though I want to tell you that I’m one of those who finds rejuvenation in life (and that the title and featured image of this post have anything to do with the content of this post), I’m not: for me, it’s found in work, in doing the work / The Work:

“Do your work and you shall reinforce yourself.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance.”

That’s not to say I haven’t tried – or that I don’t try, every day – to find life as fulfilling as work / The Work. Nor is it saying that my life is terrible...

Montaigne, “On Educating Children”

My perambulations through Montaigne’s (1533-1592) ESSAYS continue with the essential “On Educating Children,” a piece brimming with the truth that a true education is found not in memorization or regurgitation but in fostering a love of learning in the student. Throughout, Montaigne rails against the rote and the mundane:

“Spewing up food exactly as you have swallowed it is evidence of a failure to digest and assimilate it; the stomach has not done its job if, during concoction, it fails to c...

As a Matter of Fact I Do Have a Xylophone In My Office

Brought it, the xylophone I played in middle school – that it’s in my possession at all being the result of some long-forgotten negotiation sometime somewhen with someone –, the instrument that got me out of the sticks (for awhile, anyhow), over from the Archives and proceeded to noodle around with it, dog-chewed drumstick (I gave all of my mallet percussion implements to a student far more capable than I long ago) splinters, and found, after 15 years of barely touching a percussion instrumen...

Spoilers Certain: A STAR IS BORN (2018)

Finally got around to watching Bradley Cooper’s remake of the perpetually remade A STAR IS BORN (the RED HARVEST of cinematic showbiz melodrama?) over the weekend: while undoubtedbly something special – Lady Gaga is a national fucking treasure – one thing is still nagging at me.

(Spoilers Ahead):

In the first two acts, Cooper proved himself to be a remarkable talent (the next Eastwood or Redford?) behind the camera, a truth which made the “you might as well kill yourself” (paraphrased) scen...

Things to Think About But Not Really

A mosquito in my office now eliminated: mustn’t let my vigliance in this summertime funtime war slip amidst victory in a single battle… where there’s one, there’s many… buzz, buzz…

At some point in the day, one of those days, I had the notion that I needed to make a list of things I needed to think about but when I sat down to immortalize those things I needed to think about, I found that I had nothing that needed thinking about. A surprise, certainly, as they, those things that needed thinki...

Your Weekly Dog Picture for Sunday, 30 June 2019

Newsletter 0056 is on its way; regular programming returns tomorrow. Happy Sunday. 

Of Scaffolding and Spinning Plates

A period of retooling / honing / hacking to unearth a calmer, more balanced approach to the day, a routine that allows me to replenish my daily self-respect gauge without having to rush – as Donna Tartt tells us, “If you’re not enjoying something, it’s almost always because you’re doing it too fast” – headlong through the execution of my goals (write, read, run) and into the (perceived) needs / demands of life’s other spinning plates.

I like to tell myself that I’m inching closer to that ideal with each iteration, each little variation, but I won’t allow myself to foreclose the possibility that I’m simply creating problems where there are none because of some deeper issue at play.

Turning to an oft-revisited bit of wisdom from Annie Dillard:

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on with a worker can stand and labor with both hands a section at a time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order–willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living. Each day is the same, so you remember series afterward as a blurred and powerful pattern.”

Annie Dillard, “THE WRITING LIFE.”

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(In addition to these daily ramblings, I also send out a weekly newsletter on Sunday mornings. You can sign up here, if so inclined.)

Of Grotesques Fortuitous or Otherwise

Though struggling this week to find things worthwhile to say, 20,347 words have, in spite of myself sometimes, been written in this particular volume of grotesques; a Montaigne excerpt still rings true in defining my purpose here:

“I was watching an artist on my staff working on a painting when I felt a desire to emulate him. The finest place in the middle of a wall he selects for a picture to be executed to the best of his ability; then he fills up the empty spaces all round it with grotesques, which are fantastical paintings whose attractiveness consists merely in variety and novelty. And in truth, what are these Essays if not monstrosities and grotesques botched together from a variety of limbs having no defined shape, with an order sequence and proportion which are purely fortuitous?”

Michel de Montaigne, “On Affectionate Relationships.”

Purpose further cemented in M.A. Screech’s (still among the greatest names ever) summation of Montaigne’s purpose:

“For Montaigne gives his readers the fruits of his own reading and of his own reflections upon it, all measured against his personal experience during a period of intellectual ferment and of religious and political disarray. As husband, father, counsellor, mayor, he kept a critical corner of himself to himself from which he could judge in freedom and seek to be at peace with himself.”

M.A. Screech

(I think I hear a mouse rustling a bag on the other side of the wall of books.)

… 20,567 words.

Ticktock…

Ticktock, says the pancreas, ticktock.

How many times have I written here about wanting to forget about time, about the lengths to which I go in that effort? And yet there it is, always, this fucking disease, T1D/TFD, another plate spinning upon a middle finger pockmarked and calloused with fingerpricking scars amid life’s plates spinning upon middle fingers, a plate saying, feed me, feed me, ticktock, ticktock, keep me in line, keep me in check, ticktock, ticktock, says the pancreas…

That’s my secret, Cap: I’m always hangry.

Of Plateau’s Possibility (or Lack Thereof)

A feeling of late that there’s something missing – a third project, something medium-term, a balance between the long-term of the book and the short- of these daily Informalities and their weekly brethren, perhaps?

Wary, though: inordinate potential for it to be symptomatic of the Project Plateau – discussed in Belsky’s MAKING IDEAS HAPPEN –, that danger zone in which the initial pangs of love and infatuation give way to the reality of the day to day and the desire to try something new overpowers and overshadows the diligence required by the work at hand.

If this is the Plateau, then which of the two current projects is triggering it? If not, then what to do with it? (Roll with it, or roll over?)