OK, so my post about a big ole spider got the most likes of any post in ten years of blogging about science.
I have so not got the zeitgeist of the 2024 blogosphere lol – anyway, thanks, all, for the “likes”! Although one person used AI to write a very meaningless comment about arachnophobia. What’s the point, man?
By the way, back to science and space stuff. I forgot to post about the Europa Clipper project back in October.
So here you go. (It’s too late to add a message, but the project obviously is going to take some time arriving there, and you can supposedly hear US Poet Laureate Ada Limón read her poem online, although I’ve had trouble with the audio lately:
“Arching under the night sky inky with black expansiveness, we point to the planets we know, we
pin quick wishes on stars. From earth, we read the sky as if it is an unerring book of the universe, expert and evident.
Still, there are mysteries below our sky: the whale song, the songbird singing its call in the bough of a wind-shaken tree.
We are creatures of constant awe, curious at beauty, at leaf and blossom, at grief and pleasure, sun and shadow.
And it is not darkness that unites us, not the cold distance of space, but the offering of water, each drop of rain,
each rivulet, each pulse, each vein. O second moon, we, too, are made of water, of vast and beckoning seas.
We, too, are made of wonders, of great and ordinary loves, of small invisible worlds, of a need to call out through the dark.”
In that case, you should keep a diary, his advisor suggested. Write every day.
OK, he said.
And bring me a story or two to look at.
OK.
October
These aren’t stories, his advisor informed. These are more like diary entries.
How should I write a story, then? he asked.
Write what you know. Base your stories on people and things around you.
OK.
And bring me another story or two.
OK.
November
The narration isn’t believable, his advisor imparted.
Why? he asked.
It’s too difficult for the reader to identify with the characters. Nobody has a family with nine children.
What should I do?
Go read Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio.
OK.
And bring me a couple more stories.
OK.
December
I don’t get any sense of through-story, his advisor complained.
What do you mean? he asked.
The stories aren’t connected. They’re all different.
Well, what should I do?
Try an internal perspective. Go read James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
OK.
And bring me another story.
OK.
January
This is too abstract, his advisor mused.
What do you mean? he asked.
This isn’t a true plot. The symbolism is too obscure.
It’s a translation of something I wrote for a German class.
You don’t want to be Kafka.
I don’t?
You need real life stories, with real people and real problems.
What should I do?
Go read Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral.”
OK.
And…
Bring you another story?
Two.
February
I think I see the problem, his advisor intuited.
What is it? he asked.
I think you need to experience more life before you can be an effective writer.
What do you mean?
You need to go out into the world and work different jobs, meet different people, move around a bit.
My thesis is due in two months.
So it is. Make sure you give your draft to me next month.
OK.
And…
Another story?
No. Just read my comments and rewrite what you have.
OK.
March
I don’t see the point of adding poetry between the stories, his advisor grumped.
Why? he pondered.
The poems interfere with the prose.
I thought you didn’t like the prose.
I would say you need to add a poetic sense to your prose.
How do I do that?
Try writing poetry. For practice.
…
And finish the rewrite of the draft by next week.
OK.
And print three copies on a laser printer. And buy three of those thesis black cover binders.
OK.
April
Well, the three of us have examined your thesis, and we decided on a grade of B+, his advisor beamed.
…
I know it’s not as high as you wanted, but I argued that the interplay of letters, poetry, and stories woven together formed an interesting kind of metadiscourse narrative depth to the thesis structure.
…
Congratulations.
Thanks.
If you like this, you might enjoy Notes from the Nineties, a book with short stories and poems (the above is the first one, and may or may not be partially based on personal experiences my senior year in college).
I’ve kept a journal (OK, a diary) for many, many years now. It first started in September 1984 as a junior high school 1st year (7th grade) English assignment — each day, we would be given a writing prompt and at the end of the 10-week term (quarterly system back then), the English teacher would look it over and write feedback.
At least, that was the idea. In mid-October my family moved to a county and school system about 60 miles away (it’s more complicated — we couldn’t move in to the new house at first and so my siblings and I were looked after by various relatives, so we didn’t go to school for about nine to ten days). The new school didn’t use journals at all. English class was boring. Grammar and sentence diagramming.
So I kept writing at home, almost on a daily basis in the beginning.
But I’ve been fairly inconsistent over the years. I filled several notebooks, all different sizes and shapes. I stopped writing in one notebook at some point in 1999 when I moved to Japan and started another one. Then some time in 2004 I decided it was a waste of paper not to finish the 1999 one. Then I filled it up and started typing in a Word file. Then I went to Montreal four years ago and started writing in paper notebooks again.
It’s, quite frankly, a great big mess.
But there are some good ideas in these notebooks, and lots and lots of bizarre poems that I swear I do not remember writing. (Also at least half a dozen attempts at “automatic writing.” If you don’t know what that is, look it up.)
So from time to time, I’ll post some bits and pieces here. Just for safe-keeping.
Who knows? I may wind up publishing some of it at some point. Or at least drop some of it into the mouths of future SciFi characters.
I’ve been testing ChatGPT over the last couple of days. (If you don’t know what this chatbot is, here’s a good NYT article about ChatGPT and others currently in development.)
The avowed purpose of ChatGPT is to create an AI that can create believable dialogues. It does this by scouring the web for data it uses to respond to simple prompts.
By “simple,” I mean sometimes “horribly complicated,” of course. And sometimes a little ridiculous.
Somehow, I doubt that people in the US said “livin’ the dream” in the ’50s…
As has been pointed out, chatbots only generate texts based on what they have been fed, i.e., “garbage in / garbage out.” So if you push the programs hard enough, they will generate racist, sexist, homophobic etc awful stuff — because unfortunately that kind of sick and twisted garbage is still out there, somewhere online in a troll’s paradise.
So far, I have asked the program to:
Write a haiku about winter without using the word “winter”
Write a limerick about an Irish baseball player
Write a dialogue between God and Nietzsche (I just had to…)
Imagine what Jean-Paul Sartre and Immanuel Kant would say to each other (see above) but using US ’50 slang
Have Thomas Aquinas and John Locke argue about the existence of God (that one was fun)
Write a 300 word cause-effect essay about climate change
Write a 300 word compare and contrast essay about the US and Japan
Write a 1000 word short science fiction story based on Mars
Write a 1500 word short science fiction about robots in the style of Philip K Dick
Check out this free five-minute reading of “The Magic Wood,” by Henry Treece, one of many New Apocalypse poets who influenced Neil Gaiman’s dialogue in Sandman. Available only for the next 29 days.
Truly creepy. With Great Pleasure at Christmas (great title, BBC).
Link courtesy of the wordsmith Neil, himself, @neilhimself. Thanks!
We all knew it would happen sometime soon. But still it seemed sudden.
My grandfather also died during Easter weekend, many years ago. Good Friday, in fact. I was 10. We had to have the wake and funeral right away. The Church said they wouldn’t allow him to be buried on Easter Sunday.
My mother told us that Grandpa went straight to Heaven, because he died on Good Friday. That we would one day see him again.
Terry, you died on April 1st. But it was no Fool’s. It was Easter. You were sleeping, and did not wake. Continue Reading
From now I’ll be spending some time on the blog briefly explaining the background of some of the stories and poems in my new book Notes from the Nineties (already available for pre-order! Only $1.99!).
The first story in the volume is called “Cois Fharraige,” which used to be subtitled “or, By the Sea,” which is the meaning of the Irish Gaelic (Gaeilge) title. The poem that follows the story (“Ag an gcrosaire,” which means “at the crossroads”) stems from the same time period and experiences.
From 1995 to 1997 I studied creative writing, literature, history, and Irish language in the University of Notre Dame MFA program. (Actually, when I entered the program it was an MA but changed to a “terminal degree” at the end of my first year, but that’s another story…). When I told my roommate that I was studying Irish he first said “don’t the Irish speak English?” And then he added, “Gee, that’s going to improve your job offers” (or some such words). Continue Reading
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