What better topic for the first post in nearly a year than a reflection on the evolution of one’s writing? It’s worth noting that I’ve given only cursory thought to this matter–I have no map with which to speculate where this post will lead, and any conclusions will be reached purely by means of its…
In 1966, the greatest Poe scholar to have ever lived, Thomas Ollive Mabbott, retired from his teaching post at Hunter College, elated to finally possess the leisure to pursue in earnest his long-held dream of compiling a definitive edition of Poe’s complete works. Two years later, at age 69, he had all but finished the…
Depending on the duration and intensity of what one had involved oneself in, emergence from an Immersive Experience will be accompanied by a Cognitive Transformation Period, lasting hours, days, perhaps weeks. To be clear, the associated neural reconfiguration should be thought of as occurring in addition to rather than instead of the ever-present ebbs and…
If you go very long without speaking to anyone, only observing people speaking to each other, you’re likely to begin experiencing a bizarre sensation of isolation. It’s bizarre for its contradiction: feeling alone and invisible despite all the people around you. It’s like something out of The Martian Chronicles. The other day I was reassured…
I went to the writing center on campus and printed Bawd Blue Cohosh, but was dissatisfied with the results. It was readable, but not without some difficulty. The imprecision of the printer yielded blurred words. Simply throwing all the paper away seemed a wasteful and uncreative solution, so I walked across to the library, climbed…
If there were an award for expressing simple, obvious things in the most long-winded manner possible, I’d win it: Aspiring writers of non-fiction, or of stories based on true events, might choose their subjects owing to the belief that if their writing concerns something which takes up considerable space in the public consciousness, then what…
Competition is fierce for placement in leading journals of science and engineering, such as Nature and IEEE Communications Magazine. Inclusion in an issue of one of these publications earns the author(s) notoriety, prestige, and some measure of clout, which they can use to make sound legitimate outrageous claims that they might introduce while entertaining guests…
It’s a popular pastime of cynical disaffected youth to criticize small talk. I’ve done it myself occasionally. The type of thing where you mock how relatives greet each other at the airport “How was your flight?”. Depending on your reference point, the frustrating or funny thing about ridiculing small talk is that the criticisms are…
The process of creating a piece of work that didn’t formerly exist in the world can surround the author of the work in a cloud of bias that doesn’t dissipate for a long time. This may not be true for a majority of people, but I’ve noticed it in myself. I’m rarely more proud of…
After reconsideration, and a couple recent wicked dreams, I’ve decided to embark on a second attempt to document my dreams. This time, however, rather than write with as much detail as possible, which in my experience has led to the mutation of recollection, I’ll limit myself to a couple short sentences. Just enough to convey…
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