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IDF – Web Communication Course – Answer 4

IDF – Web Communication Course – Answer 4

Today the Interactive Design Foundation said:

“Consider your current website.
What can you do to increase consumer trust?
What can you do to increase consumer familiarity?
What can you to to construct a sense of presence?”

To which BW & AW replied:

I. Increasing Consumer Trust:

We should definitely offer the book with a money-back offer, and also a soliloquy promising to not hold it against you if you return the book, a soliloquy that should make clear that we ourselves have misgivings about the book, and that if you don’t like this one, we hope you’ll still like the next one, since it has to be better than this one–if it isn’t, we just don’t know how we’ll get by!

II. Increasing Consumer Familiarity:

No one’s heard of us. If there’s lots to do on the site that is free and worthwhile, people will goof around with us awhile and then start to know our ways and so we’ll become familiar to them. Unfortunately, the site has only madcap to offer. Maybe if we made a Pure Love Certificate you could download for free. Why? It would demonstrate that, all kidding aside, insofar as it is within our power, we are happy to give away all the Pure Love we have. And it could be short and sweet, unlike so much of our literary attempts. In the same vein, we need to pay a lot of attention to introducing the writings: it should be very easy to find writings that most people will find engaging and avoid the ones most people will consider overly long-winded.

III. Increasing Presence

Let’s make some skits! We wrote some ads for products. Let’s film them and embed them or link to them. This will also enhance familiarity. However, by seeing our movements, the way we hold our bodies, and the attitudes of our facial contortions, customers will perceive that we are bits of string slowly unfurling and fraying, which will decrease their trust in us. Perhaps if we hired actors.

IV. But shouldn’t we be helping consumers see what a scam advertising/presentation is?

Definitely. We need some way to point out that neither Amazon nor Wandering Albatross Press is really their friend. We at Wandering Albatross Press would like to run our business in a way that is good for everyone, but we are still selling something. Everyone thinks that they are OK and blah blah blah; but who among us even truly wants to do what’s best for everyone, let alone knows how to and does it? I know! We’ll issue a certificate of our official heartfelt apology for only kind of meaning to be truly kind–as another free download.

BW/AMW/WHATEVER

IDF – Web Communication Course – Question 3

IDF – Web Communication Course – Question 3

This time, The Interactive Design Foundations asked for up to a half a page about how we could improve our site’s Beauty, Proximity, and Similarity (three aspects of Attractiveness). And also how we could reduce our site’s Uncertainty (because if people are going to want to form a relationship with you, you need to reduce their uncertainty about you). The whole thing has to do with encouraging users to form a relationship with your site and business.

How did the boys do this time?
Not to great. Came on real strong with the metaphysics, but ran into some difficulties with the practical applications of their great Truths.

BW & AW Answer:

Beauty is Truth is Goodness is Justice, and the spot within each human moment where these ineffables run together is the same spot where Love explodes and is all. The wise see Beauty bursting through all things. That doesn’t mean they think all things are equally worthy. Beauty bursts through all things, and should be shared, and the way to share Beauty is to open hearts and minds to Beauty, and the way to do that is to encourage the growth of inner space: to encourage peace and togetherness and watchful kind joy. In individuals and groups, the values that promote such space are Beauty, Truth, Goodness, Justice, Love–those eternal directions that words cannot perfectly capture but to which words can nonetheless meaningfully point.

Proximity is convenience: is this relationship there for the taking?

Proximity is also welcomness (or at least we can roll it into this category, since the research didn’t mention that critical part ​of attraction. We form deep bonds with immediately family members partly because they are always around and partly because there is a dome of welcomness over the relationship: “come what may and annoying as everyone here is, we all accept the notion that we are in this together”. Since “we are all in this together” is actually not just true within families, but is in fact a great spiritual Truth spanning and yoking together all sentient beings, there’s no reason that we cannot expand that dome of welcomness so that it encompasses all of creation–it is just a matter of growing in wisdom. As wisdom grows one sees that we all flow together off of the one Light that shines through everything.
Similarity is, at the surface level, shared culture: shared notions about what is cool, what is interesting, how to put things, what is funny, what is right, how politics should go, how religion should be done. But at the deeper level, similarity is shared human Truth: what really matters is the Light within that alone knows what-actually-matters and how we can move in accordance with what-actually-matters. Therefore, the wiser we are, the more we grasp that we all share this Light and the longing to understand, follow, and flow off of it better.

From the foregoing, it is clear that to the wise, Beauty is everywhere, proximity is unavoidable, and similarity undeniable. Therefore, the best design will be that design that encourages the most wisdom in its users. But how can design encourage wisdom? It must be wise itself: relentlessly aware, honest, clear, kind, joyful, kindred.

But how can our website be wiser? As it is now, the site is a few silly introductory pages for several products: the site itself, an unreleased book and some possible future books, a few novelty items, and then various writings that I’ve tossed up over the last five or six years and which landed somewhere on the blog. We need to make at least a version of the book that is very readable, and we need to make it very easy to avoid falling down into the miles of verbiage. But yet we still need some way for users to see what is available. Maybe if we made the introductions to each product on the landing page into one sentence in bold with an anchor tag to reading more about that topic. How is that wiser? Well, it would be a little clearer. And how to make the site more aware? How to get a site to admit to itself and others what it is up to? What about cartoons with rollovers that reveal their underlying trick (ex: “Buy me because reading me will make you better looking and/or closer to more good looking people. Look at me: I’m reading this book and I am gorgeous!”)? That might get people thinking a little bit about how media encourages their own inner errors and thus guides them away from wisdom. But how to get them to really question the value of our product? What about our silly, back-handed, too-cool-for-school style: how do we make people aware of the deceit within that? And yet we feel that on the whole they should forgive us and work with us, because we are trying to be honest and kind–how to lay out our case for that forgiveness honestly? Obviously, we can release the answers to these questions and otherwise be transparent about our process, but we’re trying to make the landing-page itself wiser. Perhaps we could add an anti-advertising section at the bottom that links to both our advertisements and our misgivings about advertising. I think lots of banners festooned on the main page that upon rollover read “We can’t do it! We can’t get it right! We’re trying to make a perfectly decent and forthright product, but the little foolishnesses within us prevent our success!!!” Maybe that would get across our belief that honesty and kindness are the goals and also our confession that we’ve fallen short and also our intention to keep trying.

Consumer uncertainty can be reduced with a FAQ page, as well as a page on our attempts to be open, complete with links to info on what we are doing with our money (supposing any money was being made), what we’d like to accomplish, and what we wish we could get away with.

Answer from Bartleby Willard and Andy Watson to some extremely difficult questions posed by The Interactive Design Foundation.

IDF – Web Communication Course – Question 2

IDF – Web Communication Course – Question 2

Continuing with our questions posed by the Interactive Design Foundation
See IDF Web Comm – First Questions for the first set of questions that we couldn’t handle.

IDF question: “What are the values of your target audience?”
Poor AW & BW take a desperate stab at an answer:
Our target audience is somewhat aware of both their need for True Goodness​ as the ultimate bedrock and guide for their thoughts and actions and the dangers inherent in either over- or under-stating their own insight into True Goodness. However, very few people are all that wise, so (since we’re looking to engage more than a couple dozen people) the vast majority of our audience will still be mostly caught up in their longings for worldly success: material wealth, romance, friends, fun, prestige, a job they love. They value True Goodness and want to do what is right, but they only kind of wish their desire to follow True Goodness was strong enough to overtake their lives and lead them into spiritual blessedness–as they cannot shake the nagging fear that spiritual blessedness may mean they have to want to give up things they currently really really don’t want to give up.

IDF relentlessly asking questions:
“How can you construct a message and messenger that seem to reflect the values of that demographic? Considerations:
How much humor is appropriate and what type?
How much slang is appropriate and what type?
What should the messenger be wearing? Consider levels of
Formality of attire, and
Degree of crispness of attire
What is the typical rate of speech within that demographic? (slow and measured? Or quick and energetic?)
How much vocal pitch variation is most appropriate for this demographic? (mostly even, or highly varied?)​”

BW & AW give it their best:

But you see, the element within human beings that we–same as any half-way decent company–want to target does not want to be tricked. We don’t want to trick anyone. We don’t want to “seem” to be anything we are not. ​I suppose our readers will appreciate humor so long as it is kind-hearted. The project is a literary one, so slang is fine if it is artistically well-founded. There will be no pictures of real people, and the value of all images will depend upon their whimsy: how gentle is their touch and how much do they admit that we are all in this together? Look at the title of the book: A young boy, masterly painted in dark colors and soft-edges, wearing clothes and hair outdated by a couple centuries, looks thoughtfully ahead, the thumb of his writing hand on his pale round chin. It says: “Return with us to those thrilling tales of yesteryear!” It says: “and what of melancholy, tired old Europe?! Aren’t we all just flickers of light upon strange rivers?” The rate of speech of our demographic is not uniform. Nor is the vocal pitch variation.

​IDF wants to know: “How can you construct and present a messenger that makes your audience comfortable and want to trust you”

We suppose:
The messenger must admit what we are trying to accomplish: create beautiful, interesting, worthwhile thought, art, and fun; but also create a revenue stream with these creations, so we can spend more time creating and wondering at it all. It must also admit our misgivings: why should people spend their precious time, focus, and even a bit of money on us? Aren’t we somewhat lying about our goals? Don’t we to some degree desire accolades, great wealth, hot babes? Naturally, such desires flow through all of us, but the question is: how much are they driving our actions? How can the messenger be kind to both our readership and ourselves? Go easy, be well-organized, not overwhelm people with haphazard sketches. ​

Questions posed in the Interactive Design Foundation’s Web Communication course.
Answers from Bartleby Willard and Andy Watson, who just don’t know what to do–they really don’t.

IDF – Web Communication Course – Answer 1

IDF – Web Communication Course – Answer 1

Bartleby & I decided to join the Interactive Design Foundation.
We thought it could help us make the site more user friendly, and I thought maybe I could become a UX designer. At any rate, combining it with web development seemed like a good first step towards moving into tech.

But so far we are struggling.
See below for our answer to one of the early questions in the Web Communication course.

[note that they’d praised a University of Phoenix landing page that linked to articles about the usefulness of their site (central route processing), and that also showed pictures of attractive smiling people dressed in blue (peripheral route processing).]

From Interactive Design Foundation’s course on Web Communication:
“Exercise in targeting values
Take a moment to consider your audience and your message. How can you put your message in terms that will appeal to your audience? In other words, how can you frame your message in your target audience’s values?

Be sure to consider both verbal and nonverbal cues. Isolate values and address each individually. Consider: language used, colors used, images used, font and font size. Be sure to provide both strong cognitive/argumentation cues (for central route processing), and strong peripheral cues (for peripheral route processing).

Please share a quarter to half a page of your text, and describe how you would use colors, images etc. to provide nonverbal cues. (5 points)”

BW & AW answer:

The first thing we must admit to ourselves is that undermining all this mass manipulation is much more important ​than the success or failure of any given business venture.

Stop tricking people!!!! Stop it!!!

That’s the first step to decent design. Stop tricking people into wasting their time on your product. Be straight with them! Do they really want to go to the University of Phoenix? It is expensive and clearly loves money more than Truth. And what is lower than trying to fool people into thinking that they should spend all their savings and then some on your school because you’ve managed to work some pictures of good-looking smiling people in blue onto your splash page?

How to change design so that it stops jerking people around? That should be our first question. Instead of lulling users deeper and deeper into the “hush, hush, don’t think, just swallow”, every media experience should be designed to bring awareness, clarity, and honest reflection to the forefront of the user’s conscious experience. With our page “Pure Love For Sale???” https://www.from-bartleby.com/?page_id=1775​ we point out to readers how shabbily advertising treats us all, and we suggest a possible counterrevolution: use each advertisement as a challenge: “what are they trying to convince me I need? what is the spoken and unspoken reasoning? what do I really need? how does their product really relate to shared joy and the Light that alone knows that and how life matters?” But no one will bother to go to that page. And even if they do, who will read it to the end? Perhaps we could get The University of Phoenix to alter their splash page so that whenever you scroll over, for example, a smiling attractive person, a little blurb could pop up asking you to reflect on why you think they put a good looking person there, and asking you how much completing their program was likely to change your looks. This needn’t be completely contrary to their aims: they could note that with more money and leisure, aging often goes better, or at least can be fought against better. Of course, with a little discussion and consideration, I’m sure that their leadership will quickly agree that how many students they enroll is not the greatest good they need to consider–to some degree altering their aims. If UoP doesn’t take the responsibility upon themselves, perhaps our site could play around with such rollover pictures. Maybe winding them into our hilarious admonishment / advertisement.

The way our site is currently set up, it is a WordPress site with a fixed nav at the top, a giant shot of the book’s cover, and then a page or post, with a sidebar that repeats the nav links and that also has little ads for the cat totes and baby onesies. The landing page is “About This Project”, which then lists what is available on the site: 1) The book we’re about to finish any day now, as well as others planned or in the works; 2) our physical products, which are mere novelties, but which we explain are actually physical embodiments of charm, a metaphysical good; 3) The aforementioned “Pure Love For Sale” essay/ad; and 4) a quick intro to the page organizing all the blog posts, which are sketches mostly not particularly relating to the book.

Who will wade through all this? Would pictures of people reading the book and then becoming much more beautiful, smiling, and blue-wearing help? Perhaps such images would make the page both more visually interesting and more helpful for the common wheel as it tries to roll itself out of this fantastic bind (the constant, soul-misdirecting knavery of media manipulation). There’s currently no way to sign up for the mailing list (Mailchimp is telling me I need a PO box, if I don’t want to tell the world where to find me).

Below is the beginning of the text on the landing page. The style is a little flippant, pretty affable, very casual. If our readership values art and wholesome, mind- and heart-expanding fun, what imagery will call to them? If I’m going to decorate a website, I usually just steal famous art. But I’m not sure decorating this page would be a good idea. It is already perhaps too long and self-indulgent for people to scroll through. The problem we’re having here is that we only kind of want people to read the site. We also kind of feel ridiculous about the entire endeavor, worried that the primary product is not worth mentioning, rebellious against the fawning way business approaches you as it slips the long nozzle of its vacuum machine into your pockets, disheartened by the way we’re clearly mixed up in some fantastic infinite error, and just generally defeated by the inner give-up. Perhaps the best we can do is to border the writings with some comics that admit our misgivings to our readership, and that pray to God for forgiveness. This way the whimsy would be complimented by some softly beautiful imagery (we’ll steal from the French impressionists, I guess) and simultaneously complimented and counternuanced with our whimsically but also fretfully confessing captions.

The fundamental ethical dilemma of advertisers is that to get people predisposed to their message, they need to give the people what they want, but people don’t want what is good for them. They want the tip of the iceberg of goodness which is then co-opted to support their vainglorious desires to live selfishly, self-indulgently, half-assedly-while-feeling-and-looking-like-the-real-thing. And yet, no, they don’t really want that. What they want is the real thing. And, by a mixture of self-unmasking advertising and mournful flippancy, we will sit with them and together ask: “but what are we really doing here? isn’t aware clear-eyed kind-joy the only hope for any of us? and if this is so, how should we organize our lives?”

Did we answer the central route processing part of this question? Well, the text tells you what you’re getting, and it tries to be engaging.

Answers filled out by Andy Watson and Bartleby Willard

[here’s the snippet from the site’s landing page they handed in with their answers]

Hello worlds!

Welcome to our project.

On this site, you can purchase Volume 1 of “Love at a Reasonable Price” (Buy the Books), authored by the lonesome Bartleby Willard of the distant Wandering Albatross Press.

We also thinking of releasing more books and exerting ourselves in other ways, so please consider getting on our mailing list (????When will we figure out how to do this??? For now, you can reach us at: Bartleby@WanderingAlbatrossPress.com)

See below for info on WAP ebooks, novelty gifts, and Pure Love advertisements/gimmicks/scams/gimmes/larks; as well as intros to the poetry and what-not that Bartleby Willard–as isolated and mournful as a blue whale quietly circling the sevenseas–tossed up onto this site during the six years he was supposed to be staying on task.

I. The Ebooks

1. “Love at a Reasonable Price”. Stories about manufacturing, marketing, and selling Pure Love (an eternal good). And also a few stories of the mythic origins of Wandering Albatross Press. Many of these stories first arose way back when by a Bartleby Willard in many respects younger than the Bartleby Willard who now and again digs back into the linty pockets of his patched-up storytime jeans, pulls a tale out, and works it over. Available here (maybe like Spring or Summer of 2018): Buy the Books.

2. We hope for more ebooks. Sign up for the possibility of hearing more here: ???? You can write: Bartleby@WanderingAlbatrossPress.com (As of 12/30/17, you could still be the first to write!!!!)

3. Oh, there’s also “Diary of An Adament Seducer”, an account of the more recent goings-on at WAP. This project was once begun and then abandoned. Right now only the intro and the first entry is posted [Here]. Maybe we can return to it in the year 2018 or the one immediately after.

A Fun New War

A Fun New War

[NYC Journal – Politics Page]

[Editor’s Note: This essay is included in “First Essays”, available for sale (or free — write us at Editor@PureLoveShop.com and we’ll email you a copy) on the Buy Our Books! tab of this blog.]

Yes! Finally! A nice, safe fun war

Remember all those wars where everyone ends up bloody stumps lying in the cold mud or burning sand or, if lucky, the cool springtime grass, gurgling vagueries to the twittering skies? Do you remember the bombs that fall, the cities that burn, the people evaporating at the center and melting on the edges?

So what a great idea Brother Bear’s proposed! Now here’s a place for US American know-how, can-do, and go-get-em to shine bright and pleasant as a laughing spring day of fresh air, light-tunneling streams and limegreen leaf-underbellies flipped up by tickling breezes, soaking in and giggling out a broad clear sunshine!

All we have to do this time is figure out how to make voting machines secure, catch false news, and train every red-blooded American in the fine art of critically considering all ideas. How we’ll investigate and pick apart not just ads, but also conjectures, pop-off comments, well-argued but not necessarily therefore actually-reasonable soliloquies, imagery, everything! And one more tool to complete our victory: if fake news seeks to divide us, what better weapon have we but to unite? What better way to deny an attack on collective goodwill than building up the mighty arsenal of togetherness, of shared sympathies and joys, of love between all of God’s creation?

Step down, if you would be so kind, to a little lower layer*. Eye in eye here in the dark, in this old wood hold of an ancient wooden ship**. Here we’ve the privacy and salty old-oak odor conducive to confidential, earnest discussion.
Now, what if I were to tell you that this time the Russians weren’t our enemies?

You heard that right!

Those members of the Russian government seeking to unbalance and discredit our democracy with fake news and the real or merely-believed corruption of our elections: these are our enemies.

No, not so fast. Not even them!

Those elements within human beings that would live in this mean-spirited way, that would guide their overall selves to behave in this way and to take these steps: these are our enemies. Our enemy is bad-will, the desire to hurt, to maim, and the mindsets and efforts born of these spiritual errors.

We people always dream of holy wars, and now we have one. Oh happy day! The battle for the soul of the nation and the world is here clear as day! Liberal democracies win when clear-eyed, honest, kind thoughtful community wins. Can we answer this cruel, this sour-hearted salvo with clear, honest, careful, loving thinking, feeling, living, acting? Can we make lemonade? I think we can. I think we should.

Then, as we apply our love of good machines, good systems, good thinking, and shared joy to defeat those strange foolish desperate tugs within the human heart — those evil flinches that desire power more than Goodness — , as we fight the good fight against the efforts of foreign bodies to damage our democracy, we will be fighting not just outside invaders, but also corruptions within our own system and culture, even within our own hearts.

Oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy! A neat war. A fun war. The nukes are still piled up and the intrigues yet swirl like feathery shadows on all sides; the war against imaginable horrors never ends for us vulnerable little humanthings. So we should be grateful for this provocation, this inspiration to be more proactive, to fight for what is on the whole still a really wonderful set of possibilities before it is too late, before our own greeds and bitternesses and powerlustvaunts and thoughtlessnesses steal away our own beauty. The power-grab at our hearts/minds/souls by marketers and other psyche-manipulators has been going on for some time, but now the very weapon we’ve used to sucker ourselves out of money, health, community, and wisdom has been turned against us by a foreign government in a clear attempt to break our collective back: surely a sufficient wake-up call!

Let us take our stand here, so that together the Goodness within all human hearts will win and those aspects of human hearts and minds that feed and breed in rancor, meanness, greed, selfish indifference and all such snippy mean small-minded screams will have less and less resources, less and less inspiration, less and less fuel, less and less to say and do. In this way we humans can focus more and more on creation, exploration, sharing kind joy. Why not? We’ve done enough of the other stuff.
Oh happy day!

Signed,

Rick Assessment
Chief WAP Military Strategist
[From an early-2018 memo]
Author: BW
Editor: AW
[Editor’s Notes:
*a little lower layer:
See Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (Chapter 36: The Quarter Deck)
**eye in eye:
See the same book, but Chapter 132: The Symphony]

[Editor’s Note: This essay is included in “First Essays”, available for sale (or free — write us at Editor@PureLoveShop.com and we’ll email you a copy) on the Buy Our Books! tab of this blog.]

Copyright: AM Watson

We’d love it if you’d
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[NYC Journal – Politics Page]

[Something Deeperism Institute]

[NYC Journal]

Der neue Advokat: Analysis

Der neue Advokat: Analysis

Der Plot:

Ein Advokat diskutiert den Dr. Bucephalus, ein junger Advokat und neues Mitglied der Rechtsanwaltskammer, der in einem früheren Leben Streitroß Alexanders von Mazedonien war.

Charaktere:
Der Erzähler: Ein Advokat, der sich fachmännisch und ein bisschen eitel benimmt (wenigstens scheint er den Gerichtsdiener als minderwertig zu bewerten), der aber auch in seiner Handlung des Bucephalus als tolerant, rational, und im Besitz einen spürbaren künstlerischen und historischen Sinn wirkt. Seine Redensart ist zwar trocken, aber er beschreibt der Unersetztlichkeiten Alexanders von Mazedonien sehr schön.

Dr Bucephalus, ein Advokat, der wie ein Streitroß die Stufen der Freitreppe der Gerichtsgebäude besteigt, der aber normalerweise seinem früheren Leben als Streitroß Alexanders von Mazedonien nicht gleicht, und meistens seine alten Gesetzbüchern widmet.

Ein Gerichtsdiener, den—wahrscheinlich schon seiner Stellung wegen—der Erzähler als “ganz einfach” beschreibt. Er bestaunt wie Bucephalus die Freitreppe steigt—es ist aber nicht klar ob er wirklich Bucephalus mit “dem Fachblick des kleinen Stammgastes der Wettrennen” bewundert, oder nur mit einer Wertschätzung der Schönheit.

Die anderen Mitglieder der Anwaltschaft: Wir lernen nur, daß sie auch dem Dr Bucephalus verständnisvoll entgegenkommen.

Warum die Geschichte so komisch wirkt:

Der Erzähler und die andere Mitglieder der Anwaltskammer scheinen nichts komisches daran zu bemerken, daß der Dr Bucephalus die Reinkarnation des Streitroß Alexanders von Mazedonien sein sollte. Alle scheinen diese Umständen—die in unserer Weltanschauung als unmöglich gelten (auch wenn ein Mann die Reinkarnation eines Streitroßes sein könnte, wie könnte irgendjemand—geschweige denn jedermann—diese Tatsache zweifelsfrei Bescheid wissen?)—als ganz selbstverständlich hinzunehmen.

Der Erzähler und seine Kollegen konzentrieren nicht daran, ob Dr. Bucephalus vor etlichen tausenden Jahren der Streitroß Alexanders von Mazedonien hätte sein sein, sondern beschränken ihre Überlegungen daran, welche Wirkung sein ehemaliges Leben darauf haben sollte, wie ihn das Barreau handelt. Also erleben wir eine fremde Weltordnung und Realität.

Man wäre vielleicht daher verleitet, die Geschichte als psychologisch Sciencefiction zu beschreiben. Vielleicht ist es nur ein Versagen unserer Wissenschaft, daß wir nicht feststellen können, wer eine Reinkarnation von wem ist; aber das Gefühl der Geschichte ist eher magisch als zukunftwissentschaftlichisch (wie wir über sein ehemaliges Leben wissen ist nicht erklärt—ist einfach akzeptiert, als ob so eine Kenntnis ganz in Ordnung wäre); und eher einfach anders als magisch (die Geschichte spricht nicht vom Zauberei). Immerhin, die Geschichte ist mit der Sciencefiction verwandt: wie die Sciencefiction imaginären Realitäten konstruktiert, worin man wissenschaftliche, philosophisches, psychologische, und gesellschaftliche Ideen untersuchen kann, baut diese Geschichte eine andere Realität und erforscht, wie die Gesellschaft Kafkas Zeit dazu reagieren würde.

Ist diese Analysis richtig? Ein bisschen. Aber wenn man annimmt, daß alles in dieser Geschichte, von der allgemeinen Kenntnis von Reinkarnation, genau wie die Realität Kafkas Prague sein sollte, klingt die Narration als unrealistisch.

Was wir von dem Erzähler nicht wissen ist, ist wie viel er unser Sinn der Ironie teilt. Die begeisterte Vergleichung des Bucephalus bestaunenden Gerichtsdieners mit einem Pferdekenner; die Begeisterung der “Einsicht” der Rechtsanwaltskammer dem Bucephalus gegenüber; die Beschreibung der mörderisch-ehrgeizigen Einzelheiten Alexanders Handlung (wie zB, die Geschicklichkeit, mit der Lanze über den Bankettisch hinweg den Freund zu treffen) als immer noch gegenwärtig, die Fähigkeit Indien überhaupt zu finden aber als seiner Zeitgenossen völlig unmöglich; die Zustimmung Bucephalus Entscheidung den alten Büchern zu widmen: Die Leser empfindet jede dieser Formulierungen als ironisch; wie aber empfindet sie des Erzählers?

Also kann die Seltsamkeit des Erzählers nicht einfach seine Kenntnis der Reinkarnation zuzuschreiben. Das Thema scheint er sehr ernst und selbstverständlich zu nehmen, aber er schreibt voller Ironie, Witz und Kunstfertigkeit. Sicherlich verstand Kafka das Witz seiner Geschichte, aber ein Teil davon, was die Geschichte witzig und interessant macht, ist der Sinn, daß der Erzähler es alles ganz im Ernst meint.
Was tut hier Kafka? Macht er sich über die ahnungslose Arroganz des Kleinbürgertums lustig? Über seine Bereitschaft, alles unkritisch hinzunehmen? Ein bisschen. Aber mehr spielt er mit unserer Sicherheit von der Realität unserer Realität. Auch zeigt er wie die Seele des Menschens von der Schönheit strotzt. In dieser erkennbaren aber zugleich verfremdeten Version unser Weltanschauung und Verhaltensstandards, blicken wir wie unglaublich auch unsere alltäglichsten Erlebnissen sind, und auch wie wir die Schönheit des Mysteriums des Lebens—egal wie oberflächlich wir zu sein versuchen—tief hinein bemerken und spiegeln muss.

AMW/BW

Die Sorge des Hausvaters – Analysis

Die Sorge des Hausvaters – Analysis

Man muss die Sache Ernst nehmen: Sprachforscher haben den Name “Odradek” geforscht.

Man muss das Geheimnis bekennen: Sprachforschen können den Ursprung des Namens “Odradek” nicht entschlüsseln.

Man muss bestaunen: Ein kleiner zwirnbedeckte Stern, der wie auf zwei Beinen aufrecht stehen kann.
Man muss bemitleiden: Er ist eine chaotische Mischung aus abgerissenen, alten, aneinander geknoteten, aber auch ineinander verfilzten Zwirnstücken von verschiedenster Art und Farbe.

Man muss aber auch respektieren: Auch wenn am ersten Blick man versucht wäre, Odradek als gebrochen zu verstehen, sieht man dass er doch abgeschlossen ist–dass er eigentlich ein Etwas das man nicht imstande zu verstehen ist, und dass man weder fangen noch überleben noch immer zum Sprechen bringen kann.
Man muss schmelzen: Er ist so winzig und unbefangen einfach, dass man ihn als Kind zu behandeln versucht ist.

Man muss schon wieder staunen: Warum soll ein Odradek unsterblich uns Menschen kichernd beobachten?
Und wie wirkt das Ganze? Surreal. Einsam. Unglaublich. Verwirrend. Odradek existiert zwar nicht, aber das Leben liegt uns doch nahe, ungreifbar, und überlegen–wie Odradek.

BW/AMW

Short Story Game #2: Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke – Part A: Synopsis

Short Story Game #2: Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke – Part A: Synopsis

“Die Weise von Liebe und Tod des Cornets Christoph Rilke” ist eine kurze dichterische Geschichte von Rainer Marie Rilke in 1899 geschrieben. Sie handelt sich von einem jungen Cornet (der niedrigste Rang der Kavallerie), der mit achtzehn in Ungarn im Schlacht gefallen ist.

RM Rilke wurde von einem Dokument im Besitz seines Onkels inspiriert:

»… den 24. November 1663 wurde Otto von Rilke / auf Langenau / Gränitz und Ziegra / zu Linda mit seines in Ungarn gefallenen Bruders Christoph hinterlassenem Anteile am Gute Linda beliehen; doch mußte er einen Revers ausstellen / nach welchem die Lehensreichung null und nichtig sein sollte / im Falle sein Bruder Christoph (der nach beigebrachtem Totenschein als Cornet in der Kompagnie des Freiherrn von Pirovano des kaiserl. österr. Heysterschen Regiments zu Roß …. verstorben war) zurückkehrt …«

Die Geschichte geht schnell vorbei. Man sieht/fühlt, wie im Traum, mehrere flaumige Szenen:

Sie reiten zusammen ans Heer: das Reiten unter schwerer Sonne fährt unendlich fort ohne einen Tapetenwechsel; Ein Marquis, nach Tagen vom Geschwätz, hat kein Wort mehr und welkt im Sattel–bis eine zart-lustige Bemerkung von dem von Langenau (Christoph Rilke–der Held des Stücks) ihn wiederermuntert; ein Deutscher beschreibt seine Mutter, und alle verstehen, auch wenn sie seine Sprache nicht können; sie werden eng, diese Männer aus verschiedenen europäischen Ländern; die dunklen Haare des Marquis dehnen sich frauenhaft, und in der Ferne sieht der von Langenau eine Madonna–bemerkt es aber nur nachher; sie sitzen erschöpft ums Wachtfeuer, und der von Langenau, der nicht schlaffen will, sieht den Marquis, als er eine Rose küsst: “Ich habe keine Rose, keine”, denkt er; denn singt der von Langenau ein trauriges Lied; ein kleines Gespräch: der Marquis hat eine Frau zu Hause–blonde wie der von Langenau—, und er reitet durch diesen giftigen Land den türkischen Hunden entgegen um wiederzukehren, und der von Langenau denkt an ein blondes Mädchen bei der er sich entschuldigen will; das Heer ist erreicht, sie trennen sich widerwillig, der Marquis akzeptiert ein Blatt der Rose und schiebt das fremde Blatt unter den Waffenrock; im Troß zerreißen die Knechte der Dirnen die Kleider; der von Langenau verneigt sich in einer Wolke Staub vor dem General Spork, aber dem Spork–der spricht ohne seine Lippen zu bewegen–ist seines Briefes der Einführung egal; der von Langenau reitet allein auf die Kompagnie, die jenseits der Raab (ein Fluss in Ungarn) liegt, und ist aus seinen Träumen gerissen: etwas schreit ihn an, und dann abhaut er die blutige Leiche einer jungen Frau vom Baum; Christoph schreibt einen Brief an seiner Mutter (“Seid stolz: ich trage die Fahne”) und steckt ihn neben das Rosenblatt (“vielleicht findet ihn einmal Einer”); sie reiten über einen erschlagenen Bauern, der Schloss ragt, sie sind vor den Toren und reiten hinein; endlich Rast, endlich Gast sein, sicher fühlen, in seidenen Sesseln unsoldatisch sich entspannen, und wieder erst lernen was Frauen sind; ein Fest steigt auf und dann ein Tanz und alle alle riß er hin; Frauen die man nur im Schlafe sieht: du träumst davon sie zu verdienen; er fühlt sich verfremdet wie im Traum: “Bist du die Nacht?” zu einer Frau, die lächelt, und er schämt sich für sein weißes Kleid; die Gräfin verführt ihn (“Dein weißes Kleid gibt mir Dein Recht”); “Langsam lischt das Schloß aus. Alle sind schwer: müde oder verliebt oder trunken”; sie finden einander und sich selbst im Dunkel; seine Kriegsgüter hängen über einem Sessel im Vorsaal; Brand leuchtet der Schloss und alle sammeln als die Trommeln beben; aber wo ist der Cornet und seine Fahne??; er läuft durch den brennenden Hallen und dann trägt er die Fahne er helmlos fern voran, die niemals so königlich war; “da brennt ihre Fahne mitten im Feind und sie jagen ihr nach”; allein tief im Feind, wirft er sein Pferd der heidnischen mitten hinein, und sechzehn runden Saebel springen auf ihn: eine lachende Wasserkunst; “Der Waffenrock ist im Schlosse verbrannt, der Brief und das Rosenblatt einer fremden Frau”; im nächsten Frühjahr sieht ein Kurier des Freiherrn von Pirovano in Langenau eine alte Frau weinen.

About the Short Story Game: The idea is to read classic short stories, outline and analyze them, and then write a story response.

Author & Editor: What Ever

Copyright: Andrew Mackenzie Watson 2017, all rights reserved. Please do not reproduce the content of this website without written consent of the copyright holder.

What Can We Say 1 & 2

What Can We Say 1 & 2

1

What strange times! What can we say?

Let’s start with what we all can agree on and go from there.

Example 1: Let’s demand aware clear honest thought searching for truly better ways of thinking and acting, with the whole process guard-railed by the understanding that to the degree we do not prioritize sharing kind joy we are going in the wrong direction. Any human dogma that fails to accept that principle (not so much those words, nor even those concepts, but the inner-senses-of-things they imperfectly but not therefore necessarily inadequately point towards) is meaningless/boring/not-believable to human minds and hearts. So to the degree one abandons it, one disappears from the conscious moment and becomes an amoeba, pushed around by whims that rise up, as whims always will, declaring themselves, as is their spurty want, great Truths. Much wiser to keep working to better and better center oneself around the Truth–deeper and wider than human ideas, and thus not liable to literal/definitive descriptions, but not therefore completely severed from human ideas (think of how a good poem can, when read with an open mind/heart, imperfectly but still meaningfully recreate the author’s experience within the reader’s conscious moment). That way one can compare a given whim’s claims against the Joy within that alone knows that and how human thought and action actually matter. We don’t need to be enlightened to agree on this principle, and we aren’t hypocrites if we agree to it and don’t always live up to it. The point is to agree that this is the goal and to throw back words and deeds that do not live up to it: “please try again!”, not “you’re out of the club!”, which anyway clearly violates the sharing kind joy rule.

Example 2: Let’s demand clean government. We will not all agree on everything. However, we can all agree that our only hope is 1) clear honest well-considered win-win policy decisions are superior to randomly generated / whim- & prejudice-based ones (if not, we humans have no method for coherently thinking our way to truly better thoughts and actions, and are thus at the mercy of chance and history, which would imply there’s no point having political opinions, or any ideas at all [note that you have no good reason to suppose this, and to the degree you do suppose it, you don’t suppose you should bother thinking anything, and so you undercut all your thoughts, including that attempted-supposition]) and 2) our individual and group decisions are, on the whole, clear … win-win. So let’s agree that we will not tolerate dishonesty, nor will we stand for doing any old stupid thing, no matter how much money or other powers request that stupid thing. Ah! But here’s the rub! For most will assent to these principles, but then, in the same breath, they’ll come to completely different conclusions about which politicians are lying and which ones are doing any old stupid thing for the sake of money, ego, or blind worldly dogmatism grabbed with religious fervor. How? What is going on here? And how to fix it before it critically undermines our shared interests with the persistent myth that we are not on the same team and cannot share kind joy?

Example 3: Let’s agree that human ideas and feelings are not Gods, and that we must therefore ask over and over again for the great God to bless us and make us wise enough to understand that and how it is True that what we say and do really does matter, and that we really are all in this together and cannot escape one another and so must find a way, if it takes us eternity!, for everyone to share kind joy with everyone.

2

What strange times! What can we say?

Upon death, I’ve heard, the soul is led to the River Lethe, where it forgets all but its deepest, most profound, most spiritual lessons. There, every bit of you that is not Love disappears. Everything not soaked through with Love is, as some have put it, burned in the fire. And so, the theory concludes, the eternal purpose of human beings is to understand and live Love. Insofar as we accomplish this, we succeed. Insofar as we don’t, we fail and gently disappear.

Another, related, line of thought runs thus: We are all in this together and the whole rises and falls in accordance with how well we all treat each other, and also by how well we all treat shared resources: our immediate and larger environment, our governments and their organizations, our written and spoken thoughts, and so on–these structures within which all live.

There are of course those who hold that it doesn’t matter what we do. After all, the game goes on forever and there’s no stopping until all are saved. Even, they reason, if we blow up this world: that’s cool–we’ll just inhabit other forms in another world and keep on rocking. Perhaps. I couldn’t say for sure from where I sit, on a tall stool at the great front window of some no-account SouthEasternConnecticut coffee shop, watching the rain stop and a wintry droop-leafed rose bush wobble in the gray winds, the various accounts drifting see-saw all around me. However, it seems safe to say that as far as we know it would be best to not blow our hand. Better to go easy on one another and our shared physical and mental space, to seek more and more wisdom and, no matter the details of our lives, to focus first and foremost on sharing kind joy. Granted: that’s the sort of thing everybody knows, irregardless how foolish we all sometimes are and how high-flying our theories sometimes get; but, you know, at Christmas we remind ourselves of these platitudes, and that, trite as they may be, they are still True, which still Matters.

Authors: Bartleby Willard & Andy Watson
Editorial Concerns / Copyright: AMW

[correction to CNL 2018: delete “no-account”]

A Belief in Goodness

A Belief in Goodness

Dear God,

Please give us Goodness. How hard it is for us to believe in Goodness! What if Goodness is real? What if this life really is most fundamentally for sharing kind joy? How great! But also scary. Because it would mean we have to put loving compassion ahead of our longings to look out for ourselves and those closest to us. It does not mean we should not look out for ourselves and those closest to us, just that we need to relax that goal and open ourselves up to a higher one. But what if the higher one isn’t even there? Or what if we misunderstand the higher goal and so end up hurting ourselves and those we’re closest to for no good reason? What is the faith from which we must begin? That Goodness will harm no one? It’s not supposed to. It is supposed to be infinitely kind. But how much time, energy, and wealth does Goodness really want me to give away? And in what form am I to make this sacrifice? I guess calling it a sacrifice only shows that I’ve no real insight into Goodness, since all Goodness is trying to do is create lives that we can stand. As we lie dying, what must we have accomplished in order to know we made a decent effort?

Please give us Goodness. Please guide us well. Please keep us safely folded within the Light. Please help us to have whole being insight into how it is True that our top priorities should be to love the Goodness shining through all things and ourselves and everyone else with all our being. Please center our ideas and feelings around that Goodness meaningfully, and help us to keep improving the way we relate ideas, feelings, words and deeds to Goodness. Please help us to understand the Love that transcends ideas and feelings, that is prior to them, that is of God. Please keep us within kindness, within Joy.

Sincerely,

All Your Children Here
in this ragged fire
where we learn the faith
that heals the soul
so when we die its fine because we’ve learned to see the Light even when blindfolded by ideas, feelings, and other illusions that can either be fun and beautiful or ugly and destructive–depending on how we relate to them. They’re for the Light to play and laugh within, not to smother the Light in boring lies. Right? If it is right, help us to more and more whole being insight into how it is True and how its Truth should move us through this life. If it is not right, there is no Truth that means anything to human beings, and so we’ll never know anything since as we try to know what is meaningless to us, our brains and hearts turn off and we know nothing, peeling out into the chaos of blah blah blah

Author: Something Deeperist Committee, 2017 Convention

Editor:BW
Copyright: AW