when is now

If you key in, what is the time, to google, it will actually tell you the time. Whereas if you key in, when is now, it will suggest an album you might buy. It is like the maddening book that Borges wrote about with an infinite number of pages, filled with random text and drawings.

I've got a little bored with the format of recent blog posts, so being a little bored with it, I will throw it out altogether and write about something different.

I find writing therapeutic, not in a bland sense, but in the sense, that it genuinely helps me to record, recognise, reorder, rationalise, and then move forward on, my thoughts. I have doubtless written in this blog, in reference to the Getting Things Done methodology, that for me, any number over three might as well be infinite. In my head, without making a specific effort, I can generally retain three thoughts, like a juggler juggling oranges, but after that, there is no guarantee that oranges won't be hitting the floor.

I suppose, that is why I love writing lists for myself. They rationalise my thoughts, and demonstrate that once you start to write them down, there are not actually that many things to do.

I have also found the suggestion from Get Things Done, about carrying a notebook, and writing down my ideas, a useful devise. I suppose that the blog is another dimension of that process.

I suppose some of writing is just about the craft of trying to capture in evocative words, the essence of something. Some of writing is about making sense of a confusing world. Because in reality, we are insignificant actors in an uncaring world. But when we read, we see ourselves at the heart of meaning. Writing is about meaning, that is what language is, meaning conveyed. Life is not, life is living experienced. There is a tension between the two. Maybe what is written is the world as it ought to be, all neatly seen, processed, ordered and rationalised. Just as Darwin and the geologists saw the neat patterns in what lay chaotically around them. We are are own personal Darwins, applying meaning to the chaos of our lives.

Looking forward we marshall our resources, set out our plans, and set sail into the future.

There is something heroic about this sort of writing, something very human about having that boldness to understand, and then want to make an impact on what we know is an uncaring world.

But too much that is written now, is written by the yard, to fill a quota, to meet a deadline, generic fiction, bland analysis. In writing, like in life, one should be careless at times, show a strategic disregard and jump not knowing what lies out there in the dark.