Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Cirrus Uncinus

Because some flaws are more glaring when the paint is fresh, before it has dried.

The first word of chapter three's draft: in. The last word: hence. The last word winks at me and smiles. Why? I don't use the word "hence" often. We both know it is not the last word but instead the word that comes--for now--at the end.

I thought I would use something from Everything Is Miscellaneous (Weinberger) or Ambient Findability (Morville), but I have not. They are relievers--back-ups for coming revisions.

More than with the first two chapters, I have reached a point with this one where I am giving it up even though it is only ±85% of good enough. It needs more (not necessarily at the end), but I am giving it a rest on p. 45. In fact, it has grown so tired, I can hear its soft, melodic snoring already.

I thought I might find something epigraphically striking in The Theory of Clouds, a novel I read over the break. There's this, for instance:

Like all things so simple and sublime, clouds pose dangers.... Men are destroyed , and destroy each other over basic things--money or hatred. On the other hand a really complicated riddle never pushed anyone to violence; either you found the answer or gave up looking. Clouds were riddles, too, but dangerously simple ones. If you zoomed in on one part of a cloud and took a photograph, then enlarged the image, you would find that a cloud's edges seemed like another cloud, and those edges yet another, and so on. Every part of a cloud, in other words, reiterates the whole. Therefore, each cloud might be called infinite, because its very surface is composed of other clouds, and those of still other clouds, and so forth. Some like to lean over the abyss of these brainteasers; others lose their balance and tumble into its eternal blackness. (44)

I have thought about posting a review-like entry about this peculiar book on classification, clouds, and, surprisingly, sex. Well, right, it is a French novel. Borrow my copy rather than buy your own--at least until I get the review posted, okay?

The mined cloud for chapter three does not show me anything unexpected, other than the imposter-particle, "mercy." Clouds can be so sublime! And yes, we need more ironic tag clouds.

I also need three more chapters. Chapter four is next, and my aim is to have it drafted by the end of February. It's important that I nail this goal because the peak of conferencing season approaches like a wall of stiff wind shortly thereafter; hence, I will be busy with other stuff for a few weeks come March (nothing of which remotely resembles an exotic spring break, I am sad to say).

Posted by Derek Mueller at January 9, 2008 11:55 AM to Dissertation