Compromise

Thank (put your favorite deity here) for Laptops, and computers in general.

This is hard, to try and place words on a page every day.

I just imagined how it would look if I were using a typewriter and paper! Imagine a tiny little desk in the middle of a room with a small hutch on the back of it. There is a small latticed window high on the wall in front of it letting minute beams of light through , because who would ever have time to clean it, if typing on a typewriter. Imagine the entire room, a huge room, furnished with only that tiny desk in the middle of it. The floor is non existent because it is covered with crumpled up pages waist deep. Each of those crumpled pages containing a thought or maybe even two thoughts that once written down to be seen by the light of day made no sense what so ever. Environmentalist tree huggers would be pounding at the door with pitchforks and other blunt farm tools demanding the immediate silencing, of that machine responsible for the mass destruction of the world’s forests, the typewriter.

As it is, my laptop makes it so much easier, albeit may not much easier on the environment, with all the oil consumed to provide it with power, and the more oil consumed to make all of its hundreds of plastic parts. So which is better for the environment? Replacing the plastic backspace and delete keys, or thousand of sheets of crumpled up paper? I don’t think I’ll spend much research time on this one, I just vote “replacement keys”

Now back to those one or two thoughts printed on those crumpled up pages. It has occurred to me that my definition of writing has been skewed. I have always thought that to write was to transfer the thoughts from the brain to paper in and intelligent, sensible manner as applied to the subject one would be writing about. This is just plain not true!

The brain just spews forth matter and sometimes anti matter, telling the fingers to touch the appropriate keys on the keyboard to turn that matter into printed words. The brain believes it is writing, doing great things. Things so great, that all other brains will be in awe of its immense power to produce written words. Words it believes will be saved for eternity, read by the masses for generations to come. Again Not True.

It is the eyes that turn that spewed out matter into writing. The eyes inform the brain as to the validity and comprehensibility of the printed word it created. It is the eyes decision to use the delete and backspace keys, and thus save hundreds and hundreds of trees. The eyes have the logical veto power over the brain as to what goes forth as printed matter.

But the brain is deceptive my nature, and the eyes naive, always believing what they see. So many times the brain deceives the eyes into seeing what is not there. And if it can’t cause the eyes to see what it wants them to see. It simply disbelieves the eyes until the eyes give in from fatigue. We all know the brain has stamina far greater than the entire rest of the body; it keeps going even when the rest of the body has lain down wishing only for sleep.

So I propose that great writing comes from the brain and the eyes committing to a compromising and trusting relationship to produce great printed word.

Today’s Quote

I may not have always gone where I intended to go, but I think I have always ended up where I needed to be