More Meanings

Posted on 06/09/2013 by Andrew Reynolds

This week I still have the meaning of things on my brain.  Partly because I am still reading Graham’s book on intertextuality, so naturally I got thinking about the word, ‘meaning’ and wondered what it means.

Seriously, what is meaning?  What does it mean to be ‘meaningful’?  Or, the question I use to torment my elders with, “What is the meaning of life?”

In my teens and twenties I was seriously concerned that there was some grand purpose to the universe: that I hadn’t been clued into what it was and was missing out on something good. After many years of asking almost everyone I could thinking of the most direct answer I got was from my father when he replied, “Yes, it must mean something.”

Then he’d break into singing, “What’s it all about Alfie.”  Father was not a singer and in time I learned not to ask father certain questions.

In my thirties I settled on this nobel statement, when asked the question – “I believe it is about finding out what God’s will is for me and doing that.”  I was all about the notion of “discernment.”  Turns out I am not very good at it and still haven’t figured out what the man/woman/being/thingy upstairs wants me to do.  There are times I feel like I’ll get to the gates of heaven and just flat fail St. Peter’s little quiz – you know the one that lets you in the gate to the promised land.

In my forties I just tried not to have such lofty thoughts and got on about the business of living.

Today I am feeling old – mostly because yesterday, Heather and I spent much of the day building a deck.  The deck is turning out great, but today my body feels shattered – walking hurts, typing hurts, thinking hurts, hurting hurts…

Now that I am feeling old, the whole, “what’s all about?” question popped up in my brain so I thought I’d take stab at it again.  This time I thought I’d use some different methods to analyze the question.

So the first tool I thought I’d apply to the problem is one that many young people use today for such questions, yes, google.  Top of the list of answers is in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meaning_of_life  If you can’t believe Wikipedai, what can you believe.

Then I thought I might apply some good old literary criticism to the problem and see if I could derive some meaning by looking at what is the question really asking.

I’ll admit that as a young’n I asked without really understanding the question.

Let’s start by looking at these three words: ‘the’, ‘meaning’ and ‘life’.  We need to look not only at the significance of the word but also at it’s opposite.  We often need to explore both sides of a thing to understand it.  For example, day is meaningless without night and to be wet is ‘not dry.’

Take the word ‘life.’  It could be defined as, “not dead.” Therefore the meaning we are seeking to know about only applies to a specific period of time – that time between being  birth and death.  The word is a limiter to the question and rules out all other times.  Therefore the question doesn’t apply to any ‘after life.’

The word, ‘the’ is an interesting word in that it implies that there is one and only one meaning of life.  The opposite of ‘the’ is many so we’re not talking about many possible meanings but rather the one meaning.  We could also use the word ‘a’ here and change the question from, a single meaning to one of a number of meanings.

And this one should drive you nuts to think about it too much, “What does the word meaning mean?”  If you want a dictionary version try this:

what is meant by a word, text, concept, or action
implied or explicit significance
important or worthwhile quality; purpose

The implication is that to be meaning full, life should have an importance, a worthwhile quaintly or significance.

If we put the whole thing together and rewrite the question in a more specific form, we might come up with: “What is the one worthwhile quality of not being dead?” or possibly “What is the specific explicit significance of the time between birth and death?”

However, given the variations of possible questions that could be generated, is it possible for there to be one meaning? Or is it more likely that our life has meanings at different levels at different times?

Or, is it just possible that the question is unanswerable and the only value in it is the exploration?

A further complication that I’ve proven in my life is that as we have new experiences and learn new things the whole structure of our understanding shifts and the question itself changes, so I end up back with my father’s statement, “Yes, life must mean something.”

I am just hoping that at the Pearly Gates, I get away with the answer, “Sorry, couldn’t figure that one out.”

Till next week,
Andrew

Posted in General, literary theory, Spirit, Writing | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

What Does it All Mean?

Posted on 06/02/2013 by Andrew Reynolds

Last week I started reading a new book and this line caught my eye, “The dictionary is where language goes to die.”  The book is Intertextuality (The New Critical Idiom) by Allen Graham.  I bought it for a little light reading to relax before bed.

I found the quote interesting because earlier in the day I had gone to my dictionary to look up the meaning of a word.  Don’t remember the word, but trying to find the meaning of a word got me thinking about how we know what things mean – how do we find meaning and ultimately, the Truth (note the capital T – the real truth, the truth that sets the world free)?

Normally I just try to watch old WWII movies to keep myself from thinking about such things,  but our copy of “Saving Private Ryan” got a large scratch on it and I couldn’t watch it so my mind started to wander.  Then I went and started looking up things.  Using google, I searched Wikipeda for stuff, then found a word I didn’t know and went to the dictionary on my computer to get a quick definition.

Then it hit me that we define words with other words and the meaning of a word like say, “tree” is dependent on my ability to describe what a tree is with words you know the meaning of.  That in turn got me to thinking about the lessons in language that I learned while getting my BA in English and the reason way I was drawn to the noble study of literary criticism.

Literary criticism is an often misunderstood academic study and discipline.  It isn’t about witty remarks on how horrible the last novel I read was – rather it is about how we derive mean from a literary work.  In this case the criticism part really refers more to “critical thinking” than “criticizing that horrible movie.”

There are a number of ways to do that which are referred to as “literary theories,”  that is to say ways of viewing a text.  One of my favorite theories is the notion of intertextuality.  So once I let my mind start drifting towards literary theories I remembered that I didn’t have a book to read and went to look at my “to-read” list on Good Reads.

What joy to find that top of my list was Graham’s book on Intertextuality.  The Kindle version of the book was about the same price as a 12 pack of beer so I figured I could afford to buy it.

Well, if I’d bought the beer, this post would have been a lot shorter.

I could go into great lengths to explain the theory to you, but the three of you who read this far would now be clicking to a different website.  So here’s the short version: How do you know what I am talking about in this blog post?  How can you understand its meaning?  Simple, you’ve read other texts that use the same words – language – and assume that I am using the word or phrase in a similar way and then in your brain you construct a mental picture of what you think I am saying.  Then a meaning is formed for you.  Each reader of my blog approaches it from a different set of experiences and therefore each reader is likely to understand my words differently.

Cool, huh?

Makes more sense after the second beer.

But here is my problem as a writer – I don’t want you forming your own meanings to my words.  I want you to see what I am trying to say.

Let’s take a simple example.  Let’s say I use the word, ‘tree.’  What picture does that bring to your mind.  Think about it for a minute.  I’ll wait……

Okay, now let’s finish the game.  I was thinking of a tall redwood tree – specifically a sequoia semperviren (or coastal redwood) that inhabit the California hills near where I live.

Chances are the tree you thought of and the tree I thought of were very different.  Once I tried this exercise with a group of software engineers and when I went around the room, each engineer described a tree from where the grew up.  However, one engineer had a puzzled look and said, “I thought you were talking about a file directory tree.”

I am consistently amazed that we humans have any level of mutual understanding.  It’s no surprise that people misunderstand each other.  After all the only way I have to understand you is to relate the language of you to language that is me – a language stored in the dictionary of my experiences and knowledge.

The only way for you to get the same exact meaning out of this blog post that I intended, is for you to have had all the same experiences as me – that is to be me.  But you aren’t me so you’ll discover a different meaning (or none at all).

Makes one want to give up writing altogether – what with readers having their own minds and all.

But despite the challenge we writers persist – either looking for common ground or throwing words to the wind, hoping that someone will find something worthy in our words – whatever it might mean.

Or we could just get a beer and watch a movie.

Till next week,
Andrew

Posted in literary theory, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

The Memorial Day Post

Posted on 05/26/2013 by Andrew Reynolds

My father served in WWII as a radar technician in the Army Coast Artillery Corps.  He didn’t see combat and did nothing heroic.  He spent three years siting on a rock in the Aleutian Islands polishing his radar set and watching for an attack that never came.

Unlike the combat veterans of that war, my father talked freely about his experiences in the Army and during the war.  It’s an interesting difference I’ve noted among veterans – those who suffer in battle are the least likely to talk about their experiences.  Just too painful I image.

For my father the war past him by.  He was drafted, trained and went where the Army told him.  He didn’t like being in the Army and likely wouldn’t have volunteered, but when the draft notice came he did his duty.  He put on the uniform and tried to be a soldier.

He wasn’t much of a soldier.  Physically uncoordinated, not physically fit and no idea which end of a rifle to point at the enemy.  Father often told the story of how on the obstacle course while he was trying to climb the wall an exasperated sergeant just yelled, “go around Reynolds, just go around you’re holding up the platoon.”

It’s very likely that had they turned my father into an infantryman, father would have done more damage to our side.  Seeing my father in later years, I could just see him walking along, falling into a foxhole and injuring his squad.

We’ve all heard stories about the dumb things that military organizations do, but in my father’s case the Army did the right thing – they took away his rifle and sent him to radar school. Likely the best – father was smart, mentally tough, detail oriented and learned fast.  Everything they needed in a good radar man.

When I was a teenager listening to my father’s war stories, I often wondered how good a radar technician he was.  After the war father didn’t carry on in electronics, becoming an accountant instead (a damn good one).  He couldn’t really fix anything – not even changing a tire, so I often wondered about some of the stories he told.

Then I turned 18 and decided on a career in electronics for myself.  I signed up for an electronics school and proudly brought home my text books.  Showing them to my father, I was astonished to have him start lecturing me about the applications of Ohm’s law and correcting my inductance calculations.  His theories on troubleshooting electronics helped me move ahead in my career.

But that was my father – more theory than practice.

What I’ve come to realize is that he only really knew how to repair two radar sets – the ones the army taught him.  The two he was ordered to operate.  The two that were used at his base.  Other than the general theory, he wasn’t really interested in radar.  He was willing to do his duty and take part in the war.  He was told to learn how to fix the radar and so he did.  Knowing my father, I suspect that if they had told him to learn how to repair tanks, he would have done it.

Father often told this story about the first time he was on duty as an operator – he was both the repair man and operator. During the day the radar wasn’t used and radar was used mostly at night, or in foggy conditions – anytime that the men at the base end stations couldn’t get a good view of the ocean.  One foggy night, father was watching the set and noticed an echo.  He swung into action.

Quickly he calculated the position, speed and size of the target.  Then he called the battery commander with the sighting report.  It was a worrying target, about the size of a submarine conning tower and in a likely place in the harbor for a sub to sit itself.

The battery commander was a bit confused by the sighting – odd place for an enemy vessel and in the dark and fog, what could a Japanese sub hope to accomplish?  Plus the fact that the officer hadn’t received much training on radar and knew little of its capabilities.

So they watched.  The whole thing took on a very odd, surrealist quality.  The target dropped out of sight once or twice. Then it got bigger and slowly moved about 100 yards to the right.

At dawn, after calling in position reports every fifteen minutes, father was ordered to shut down the radar set and report to the base end station (an observation point for battery).  There, a slight harassed officer pointed out to the harbor and said, “specialist, you’ve been tracking that rock all night.”

Yup, there was a big rock in the harbor that was only visible during low tide.  Father had just come on duty as the tide turned.  Over the next few days the radar men were ordered to plot the position of every rock and obstacle the radar could see and where given the tide tables with orders to record high and low tides in their logs.

Father’s version was much funnier and went on for much longer.

But on this memorial day, he is on my mind and I remember.

Father died in 2001 at the VA hospital in Menlo Park, California.

On this memorial day, join me in remembering all those who served – however they served, from just doing as ordered to those who were called to do more.

Till next week,
Andrew

Posted in General, Writing | Tagged , , , , | 9 Comments

Writer’s Block or Why I Didn’t Write Today

Posted on 05/19/2013 by Andrew Reynolds

If you read writing blogs or how to books on writing, you’ll very quickly come across the basic topic of, “Writer’s block.”  Yes that sinister soul sucking malady that terrorizes all writers and drives many from their keyboards to fill their souls with shame and guilt.

The most often heard cry from the novelist’s desk is, “I don’t know what to write about!”

I have an answer to that cry, sarcastic and flippant, but it is an answer. It goes like this:  Write anyway – you can always rewrite and edit later.  Not every piece of writing needs to win a Pulitzer Prize (bet this blog post won’t).

I have wondered from time to time if journalists suffer from writer’s block.  Think about.  Does the New York Times hold classes for journalists who can’t think of a thing to write?  Let’s say you’re a reporter on the city desk and a ten-car pileup, closes the Holland Tunnel.  You’re sent out on assignment.  Is it an option to come back to the editor and say, “Couldn’t think of a thing to write.  I think I’ve got writer’s block.”?

What do you think the response will be?  A compassionate hug with a free pass to the next writing seminar or a quick kick up the backside with a ticket to the unemployment line?

I will leave the answer to that question as an exercise for the reader.

I bring up the above little illustration because I am about 15 minutes into an essay where I am suffering from writer’s block.  Yup, I don’t have a clue what to write about but I have a self-imposed weekly deadline for my blog and would hate to have to fire myself for missing it.  So I am following my own advice and writing anyway.

Some times free writing – the process of just writing whatever comes into your head – for 15 minutes, is enough to get the brain and creativity working.  I will admit to writing a lot of stuff that you never see on this blog.  I figure if I can write for an hour, there will be enough stuff to edit out for a decent post. And if there isn’t a decent post – well I’ve got tons of pictures in iPhoto that I could post.

Hey, photo captions count as writing.

My reason today for not having an award wining post is:  I’ve been busy and I am very tired today.

Heather and I know we’ve been over doing lately and yesterday, we planned a day out. As Julia Cameron suggests in her book “The Artist’s Way,” to ‘breath in’ – to do something that feeds our soul, rests our mind and inspires our creativity.

I think I inhaled too deeply. We went for a hike at one of our favorite spots, Fall Creek (watch for a Reluctant Hiker post with pictures and some words).  It was a great day out.  We hiked about four miles and I took 81 pictures and 10 video clips on my iPhone.  Today I can barely move without pain – well maybe not that bad, but yesterday did show how badly out of shape I am.

I was also still a bit tired from my day on Thursday.  My brother, Wild Bill, had his treatment procedure for his prostate cancer.  I was up at 5:00 am to get him to the hospital and it was well after 1:00 pm before I staggered home.  Bill’s fine and the procedure went as expected.  His doctors are confident that this treatment will be enough to knock out the cancer.

The emotional and physical energy drain was more than I expected.  Guess I am getting a bit too old to be lifting wheelchairs in and out of cars and chasing doctors and nurses around hospitals.  Since Bill and I have the same cancer the emotions ran deeper since I knew what he was going through.

And I am just plain physically out of shape.  Have I mentioned that yet?

I’ve been doing my daily walks at lunch time and have been trying to eat as healthy as possible (a large pastrami sandwich is healthy if you skip the bag of chips and the soda, right?).  I have felt my fitness level fall lately – gotten worse since our treadmill died.  You’d think that a treadmill would last more than ten years – especially when you consider that I didn’t use it for five of those years.

So here I am, out of shape, with nothing to write about.

Well I’ve got a solution to both.  I am now committing myself to a serious fitness program to both improve cardiovascular and general fitness with the vain hope that I might lose some weight.  Heather and I are going to look into health club options and possibly buying a new fitness machine.

Okay, get the laugher out of your system now, I’ll wait…

Next week I shall write about my new fitness program, my progress, goals and the name of the hospital to send the get well cards too.

Till next time,
Andrew

Posted in Hiking, Prostate Cancer, Writing | Tagged , , , , | 5 Comments