searching for a Voice

Staring in the dark for what I seek to find --

        a dark that seems quite different from
                                                                       the end . . .
        the end of where, the end of when,
        the end of all that once was our world; 

        not dark which filled the naught of
                                                                       all untime . . .  
        untime no now, untime no then,
        untime before space-time itself unfurled --

staring in the dark of seeking to unwind
a pathway
                        to my fingers
                                                     from my mind --

Wond'ring all the while, whether there's a choice --

        a choice of Muse that guides the Fates
                                                                       to cleave 
        a life felt lost, a life by others tossed,
        its life's strands weaved on someone else's loom;
 
        or a choice that's mine:  Of silence
                                                                       or to leave
        some trace behind no matter what the cost, 
        to strike a chord that cuts away the gloom --

Wond'ring all the while, whether you'll rejoice
on reading --
                            or will have tired from --
                                                                     my voice.


I feel I need to get several things out of the way.  By way of emphasis, I repeat from my first text in this blogging endeavor:   I consider [this blog] an experiment in which I get to use myself as the test subject.  The primary object in my doing this is personal.  The subjects will be those of personal interest to me.  The exercise of writing, even when I do not want to write, is to aspire to a personal goal.

I suppose that everyone who writes in a public venue is cognizant of the fact that others may read what has been written.  Most, including me, have enough vested interest in the effort so as to have some desire as to the response evoked in the reader.  One thing of which I am sure, while there are certain people of general repute whose comments I would consider an honor, the reaction of my wife or of my friends is paramount to me.

I recognize that the anonymity of the internet has changed the standard of what is acceptable expression of one's ideas, but it is my blog.  I have tried to set it up so that comments are permitted, but it is my blog.  So, say I am old, say I am out of touch, lay whatever condemnation you feel you must upon me, but I will protect certain aspects of this blog, such as limiting obscenity and maintaining some level of decency in the discussions, because . . . it is my blog.

In the personal experimentation that occurs within the blog is a self-examination of my habitual approach to writing.  All of that portion of my life in which I have been engaged in the exercise of writing -- before this, usually at the behest of someone else -- I have been for the most part a stream of consciousness writer.  The first draft has usually been the final draft (with the exception of modern access to running whatever spell-checking software was imbedded within recent word processing programs when spell-checking came at no additional charge to the purchase of such programs).

On occasion I like to tell people these habits became ingrained before I entered junior high school.  My hand-eye coordination never managed to attain to legible my use of pencil (regardless of hardness) or pen (regardless of tip) after cursive writing was forced upon even those of us with impaired meat hooks for hands.  As a result, I began in fifth grade to use, what was even then, in the early 1960s, an old, manual Royal typewriter that one of my parents had put away in the basement.  I had no access to "Liquid Paper," "Wite-Out," or correction papers.  Error correction was a choice between restarting the page or erasing and trying to type over that which I had erased.  It was difficult enough for me with my lack of dexterity and with that typewriter to roll up the paper to a point where an eraser could be applied to the paper and then to roll it back down to exact realignment.  My attempts at erasing without leaving a hole in the paper were of a skill level comparable only to that of my cursive writing.  I considered it a success when I achieved a sufficient reduction in the erasure smudge -- even though the paper had been thinned to the point where only one or two more passes of the eraser would have made a hole bloom -- that the newly typed letters were somewhat legible.

In no small part because my cursive handwriting has not gotten any better since then, I believe that the teachers were better off for my having used a typewriter -- despite the unevenness of letter quality due to my childish two-fingered pounding on an old, manual, inked-ribbon typewriter, the several smudged up places on each page, and my first-draft-final approach to writing -- than had I turned in handwritten pages -- illegible in cursive or painfully scrawled in printed block letters, with several places on each page smudged from fingers dragging across inked page or from pencil erasures, and what I am sure would have been my first-draft-final approach had I been forced to endure the "curse" from which -- and despite all denials that have been foisted upon me, I still believe -- the term cursive when it is applied as a modifier to writing is derived.

Even when engaged in stream of consciousness writing, different voices often appear in the text.  I have more than once been told by recipients of personal letters from me that they heard my spoken voice in their heads as they read the text.  When the recipient is due a more formal correspondence, there is, of course, the obligation to a certain precision attendant to the nature of the correspondence, but my own mental process often involves adopting an entirely different voice representing a different character which I am playing on life's stage.

It never occurred to me how easily I had slipped into this habit of role playing until it was commented upon by a newly-hired attorney who was getting some training by watching me in court (way, way back when I only had a couple of years of experience myself).  After the court appearance, in a meeting with me and another staff attorney, this new staff attorney asked whether it was essential to the job "to develop a split personality?"  Almost simultaneously the other staff attorney and I asked what the new hire meant by the question.

She said that she had never seen anyone change personalities so radically as I had between the time we entered the elevator up to the courtroom and the time we left the elevator after having come down from the courtroom floor.  She then went on to describe her impression of what had occurred.

When we got to the courtroom, the only persons present other than the court reporter was the respondent to the motion brought on behalf of our client and the attorney for that respondent.  She noted that, before the hearing began, the respondent's attorney and I were chatting so amicably she assumed we must have been personal friends.  She was startled, however, at how vehemently I presented my argument for our client, especially our request that the attorney be required (as the law permitted in this matter) to disgorge all of his fees back to his client.  (It is my recollection even now that this fight over his fees was the part of the hearing which got the most contentious between us.)  But, what shocked her the most was, despite my argument personally directed at the disgorgement of fees by the attorney based on the attorney's own failures in the matter, he and I were chatting as if the whole hearing had not happened as we rode down in the elevator after the hearing.

Prior to this, I had, at most, only incidentally thought of as acting the various ways I approached the different phases of my life.  Since then, I find myself inclined to wonder often, which of any one or of any combination of the different aspects of the personality I play is me.  

As Shakespeare penned:

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts . . .
     -- "As You Like It," Act 2

And each part we play has its own voice.

I have certainty as to some of the people who will read this blog.  I have some idea as to the subjects about which I wish to write, and I want to get through a certain part of my list of those subjects.  Still, I recognize that my desires may change with time and my own mental evolution about this endeavor.

I have no idea yet as to the voice which will develop during this effort.

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The world appears not to have begun the violent end predicted by Mr. Camping.  Or so I suppose as I sit here in the dark of my room, with only the darkness of the night outside my window, my desktop lit by a small desk lamp, and two computer screens and the light of my fish tank adding to an ambiance that could be restful, eerie, or humorous depending on the music playing in your head as you envision this.

Penny and the dogs went to bed hours ago and the only sound is from the fish tank motors (ignoring for the moment the ever-present sense of sound which is a tinnitus resulting from the medications that keep this body alive, from old age, or from both).  In this moment and from this thought what is called to mind surfaces from 40 years ago -- times when I used to come up from the sluice way under the roll bars in the Braddock steel rolling mill during a break:  Upon seeing no one else on the floor, it occasionally crossed my mind that the final trump could have sounded, and I would never have heard it between the rolling noise and the rush of the water, and I alone remained . . .

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