Writing Boot Camp, Day 1

11:40AM. OK, so I've sworn off Facebook for the 4-hour window of the little experiment in social pressure that is the "Kick (Your Own) Butt Writing Boot Camp", but I'm going to try to keep a blog window open to keep the writing happening and perhaps (?) work through writer's blocks that come up while sitting here. The first day is in Actual Cafe at Alcatraz and San Pablo and, true to form, I'm the only one here. Along with all the other wonderful people in the cafe, of course.

But of course that's not true...I think that there will be other people who want to kick their butts into shape a little bit and get writing as well, and what's needed is a little bit of structure. How to create that in the me-first crowdsourced, anti-hierarchical age we live in? And how can "boot camp" be anything other than a playful metaphor for consumption just like all the rest, when even the Army has now for a few years resorted to the slogan "Army of One"?

1:09PM. Not much blogging in the last few hours is, hopefully, a good thing. Over 400 words written in the past 4 hours which is also, hopefully, a good thing. 100 words/hour actually feels like a fast pace given where I've been in writing recently. The reality with reading and note-taking figured in--let alone sleeping, eating, exercise, working, and the myriad other activities and distractions that fill everyday life--is that it's slower. And to project out to the number of words required for the whole dissertation is, in a word, depressing.

Anyway, it was a good start. Thanks, Actual.

a diet of sorts. but with whose body? and to whose health? (4)

After 72 hours off, I just reactivated Facebook. And I have to say, my response as I went to the Facebook page, auto-filled the login and password fields, and press the "connexion" button was visceral. I felt it in my stomach. Revulsion. A slight urge to barf.

I'm not kidding. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that I was just running up in the stadium, and my body was sort of there already. But even looking over all the familiar icons, shapes, colors, and boxed-in faces and statements, it looked slightly foreign. A place where I may belong in some sense, but whose constraints on relationships and utterances and appearances and manners of being seemed lined up in cells, standing out in clear relief. We put ourselves in those little boxes, fit ourselves and our forms into its blue-and-white reverse-chronological ad-lined incessantly-connectifying matrix. Encased. Kind of like Han Solo in deep freeze.

I'm sure *I* am the same way on this blog, on Twitter, and wherever else I am, where you are, where we are. Simultaneously enabled and incredibly constrained, shaped and formed by the medium.

I suppose that's the precondition for all of our utterances, in this body and that--to be constrained and enabled by the same mechanisms of being and articulation.

Yet never have I felt so strongly that one reason Facebook is so comfortable on the inside, and is (at the present moment anyway!) seeming so gross from the outside, is that being there is like all sharing the same body--our body, where we live discursive and cyber-embodied lives something akin to parasites (feeding on ourselves, each other?), creative at the local level and utterly dependent on the greater system for the life, the flesh, the blood, the circulation it affords us.

Yes, I know I'm being overly dramatic. But that sinking feeling is still sitting heavy in my gut. Maybe the "diet" metaphor's not too far off the mark after all. Bleeccchh.

yup, this is #4 in the series...I'm hoping to get back to two other half-baked posts from the last few days.

a diet of sorts. but with whose body? and to whose health? (1)

I sit in the midst of any number of familiar environments as I start this post.

Where to start? How about the one that begins with my ass planted on this hard wooden bench: at Caffe Strada on a warm fogless Sunday morning in Berkeley, shortly after walking up from the packed England-Germany World Cup soccer match at Henry's, a sea of jerseys and cheers...The sun shines down on the tables, filtered through the trees over the patio, with people here and there in pairs talking, reading the paper or a magazine, and a few like me, looking busy and involved in their screens. I think of (usually cooler and greyer) mornings of cappuccinos and morning buns with Charles here, of the sea of students that usually populate and circulate throughout the place, of the vibrancy of this cafe on the corner of the street, on the edge of campus, sitting on the verge of the Berkeley hills.

But the material environment of human bodies, panting dogs, concrete patios and leafy trees is only one of the worlds I can see and feel opening up in front of me. On the table, along with the computer, red folder, water glass, and uneaten banana sits my cellphone, a new vessel for an older set of functions, bringing familiar people, friends and family, into my pocket, hand, ear and mind through voice calls and text messages. The weight of the phone in my pocket, and the ambient sense of connectivity it brings when sitting on the table, bring to mind scenes and passages from The Lord of the Rings. The phone-ring is a node of power, mediating our connection to the world, transporting us to other places and bringing others here. And it is simultaneously a lead weight, sucking our minds into its web, pulling our hands toward it, feeling comfortable in our fingers--its soothing buttons, its smooth curves, the calming expanse of its glassy screen... my precious, our preciousssssss....

If the phone, powered on, reaches around me, enfolds me within its virtual reach, then what of the domains that open up when I lift the lid of this computer? "The computer", and "the Internet" even, have long ceased to be thought of in the singular. Icons for no fewer than 28 separate applications line the bottom of the screen, and any number of applications are available at the click of a button. I've got only five tabs open now in this Firefox browser, while the dropbox icon at top lures me to my files online, the wireless signal monitor reassures me that I'm online, the U.S. flag tells me I'm typing in U.S. English, and, oh yes, icons for a dozen documents and folders lie arranged across the top of my desk, which just happens to be a window to a sweeping vista of tree-lined fields leading to dark hills, themselves dwarfed by a range of craggy white mountains in the distance.

Here I sit, I remind myself. Here I sit.

update: u.s. v. algeria

Fantastic finish for the U.S...but could you make it a little easier on us next time?? I'm half bald now... Great job by Algeria! Congrats Mexico, England, S Korea, & all the rest. And thanks to all the good folks at @GUERILLACAFE. Onward, to the Round of 16!!!

here's looking (back) at you -- again

A few weeks ago I posted a picture of a unique but slightly unsettling cappuccino experience at the French Hotel. A few days ago, I had another chance to meet another face in the froth, and comparing them both seems to say something about two different people, two different days, or perhaps this one just had a bit of a rough day on the way to work.

Again, here's looking back at you:

liveblogging 1-2-3

That's liveblogging at Local 123 on quite a mellow afternoon in a May that has seemed more like a February, in a year when February seemed more like July...

• 2:26pm. So, yes, things are a little out of balance, which should make for perfect blogging. Considering the theory that when everything's right with the world, and you're feeling satisfied about the way things are, then you're too immersed in the moment to get the remove you need to write about the moment. Blogging and meditation, on that count, wouldn't go all that well together. I wonder how many meditation blogs there are out there...
• 2:28pm. First task of the day, after catching up on emails, is to get back to the Leather & van Dam Ecology of Language Acquisition chapter from Michael Toolan: "An integrational linguistic view of coming into language: Reflexivity and metonymy". Ooohh. The trees outside the window respond, waving back and forth gently in the afternoon window, shadows playing on the sidewalk and concrete cafe floor. It's the first time I've noticed that the front wall is actually a sliding garage door. And Journey's "Faithfully" comes on, but then is cut off before Steve Perry can hit his soaring notes in the end. We better let him finish:

• 3:27pm. We continue our journey through the 1980s as A-ha's "Take on me" echoes through 123, mixing with the jingling change at the register, the passing cars, conversations from tables at the other end...
• 5:08pm. After various other activities, eating, getting another cappuccino, feeling the afternoon breeze kick up through the door (window? where IS that breeze coming from?), staring more at the Tooley chapter, talking to neighbors, checking email, reading another article, and now finishing writing up a summary of the chapter on my wiki for Rick to read--and thinking about my post-in-progress on Found in Translation--I'm again struck by the question of whether or not writing for myself in whatever intellectual pursuit I'm engaged in, is enough. And writing these words on this blog only heightens this sense of contradiction. I'm triple publishing right now. Must everything be visible? Is it really just writing anymore when writing is simultaneously publishing, of some sort, on some platform? Would I myself as a writer (or should I say blogger?) be motivated to write as much if these words, and the chapter summary I'm typing up, and the FIT blog entry I'm writing as part of (or leading to) my dissertation, were not online? Does Writing nowadays = writing + publishing?

thoughtstream at the abbey, santa cruz

I settled on The Abbey on an inspiration, when I remembered that Sarah would be making her weekly pilgrimage back to UCSC. Got in around 10:45 and settled in with double capp and a piece of zucchini bread, both quite nice. But as I'm not a coffee-reviewer I'll leave those behind for the moment and open up the floor for some running thoughts as I sit with the music and Homi Bhabha's The location of culture and Roy Harris' Rethinking writing. Kind of an odd trio to be at the table together, but such it is...

• 11:03AM. Berkeley needs a cafe like The Abbey in Santa Cruz: a coffee lounge with upright piano, stage, couches, smooth tunes, windows hanging in the middle of the room, chandeliers, mirrors and, oh yeah, good coffee and beer.
• 11:29AM. Last time coming here, I remember hearing Jónsi and being enervated for the drive down the coast, on the way to UCCLLT conference in San Diego. Quite a different day today, to be here not on the way somewhere else, but here as the destination.
• 11:55AM. Why does Roy Harris have to invent an entire body of terminology to make his argument. Does anyone else talk about the writing of languages as "glottic writing"? Then there's the "surrogational" perspective on writing, "segregationist" and "integrative" approaches to linguistics...come to think of it, has he really made it beyond Saussurian dualism?
• 12:29PM. Reading more of Harris and the conversation from the next table infiltrates into my consciousness. Woman tells man: "Don't you know that when you buy running shoes you should buy them a half size too big 'cause when you're running your foot gets hot and ends up expanding a little?" Man replies, "No, I didn't know that." Neither did I. 
• 1:46PM. Wow, much time has passed and I am struggling with this text. I don't know if I'm rested enough to wrestle with these fundamental notions of symbolism and representation that Harris is working with. So what prompted me to write now? I just noticed that the girl on one side of me, and the guy on the other, both had left their tables for a few minutes (and the guy for much longer) with computers sitting on the table. They guy had even left his wallet and phone on the table for quite a little while. People are so trusting here, I thought. Wow. I wouldn't leave this computer sitting on a table here or anywhere. How has Berkeley made me who I am in terms of feelings of public safety? 
• 2:17PM. Whoah, music gone, Harris getting old, room getting warm, butt hurts, need to go to the bathroom, getting hungry. Time for a #changeofscene.

Until next time, lovelies!