Charles Folkard:
She found...ripe strawberries, poking up dark red out of the snow. (1911)

"… an appropriate backdrop for such a ragged undertaking."

I do not believe in smooth transitions but ragged ones. In theory, we finish before beginning anew, but we probably never do in practice. There's always some tail dragging behind the prow, some finishing touches needed even after a masterpiece was exhibited. I segment my days into tidy-seeming stories, but my internal dialogue discloses the underlying mess. I require much forgiveness to start before I've completely finished, but I could never begin if required to complete my prior work. Yesterday, I published my reported "last" installment of my GoodNuff Series. I even accomplished what I'd never managed before. I completed assembling those ninety-four stories into a finished manuscript. I even compiled them into a single document, complete with illustrations, suitable for submission on the same day I posted the final piece. I usually drag a finished series behind me for a very long time before I finally catch up to compiling the completed manuscript. My life seems more than littered with unfinished business.

The moment I finished compiling that series, though, The Muse mentioned that I'd misspelled something in that last story, negating my advance. I corrected the error, which had propagated into four or five different areas, validating my premise here. Even though I came close to completing everything on time, I was still FinishingIn rather than Up. I might feature my ragged beginnings rather than pretend they don't accompany my progress. The pagination didn't seem quite right in that first compilation. I'll be fiddling with that for at least a few days more. This work will complicate my follow-up efforts.

I also finished my final copyedit to my Clueless Series this week, which I originally posted here in the summer of 2018 under the title of Clueless Summer. I initially imagined that the series might become a published book and intended to tout the idea that Cluelessness might be our hidden superpower. The work turned out differently than my publisher had imagined. It offered scant advice and refused to insist that it resolved the fundamental difficulty of human existence. I shared an earlier version among some loyal readers, receiving enthusiastic feedback, then finally subjected it to an AI-assisted final copyediting over the last few months. I finished that work this week so the manuscript could be submitted for publication, albeit not to Berrett-Koehler, my original publisher. Clueless will become a self-published work if I can get my act together enough to jump through all the hoops required to accomplish such a feat. FinishingIn requires that the protagonist feel enmired, encumbered by accumulated ragged endings and ambiguous beginnings.

Here I am, talking to myself again. I dedicate this new series to the fine but rarely mentioned art of talking to myself. Like you, I try to keep such things to myself, but I catch myself blurting sometimes. Worse, The Muse catches me blurting sometimes. She hears me say some phrase I was only saying to myself, in another attempt to listen to myself think, but I spoke aloud. I have nothing against speaking aloud to myself. It's like somebody reading me a story with me performing the role of somebody. When puttering in the yard, I often catch myself holding forth to myself, explaining some detail, or just mumbling some catchy phrase. Even when I seem mute, my storytelling continues. These stories are my mantra, intended only for my ears and, perhaps, the cats'. When The Muse overhears, I feel slightly embarrassed, as if I'd just been caught engaging in some forbidden act.

My internal dialogue, my iAlogue, seems eternal. I suspect it's like that for everyone, for I don't believe in abstract thinking. We tell ourselves stories instead because I doubt that any ideas exist outside of language, and there's not always anyone amenable to hearing anywhere near, so I tell myself the stories I desperately need to hear. I despise movies and television and can only tolerate them in tiny doses because they interfere with the stories I tell myself to make sense of this place. Without these stories, I doubt that I could navigate anywhere. Books, films, podcasts, and social media interfere with the smooth functioning of my internal storytelling. Oh, I engage in them but try to limit my exposure because while they tell stories, none of them seem nearly as meaningful as the ones I tell myself.

At some odd point, my internal dialogue slipped out into the public, and I declared myself a writer. What an audacious proposition, that anyone might find in any way useful the iAlogue by which I navigate. Each has their own, I suspect, and each probably provides a better fit to local conditions. I'm no paragon of anything other than ragged endings and equally ragged beginnings. Over the next few days, I expect to move beyond GoodNuff and into fresher stuff. This day, the shortest of the year, followed by the longest night, seems an appropriate backdrop for such a ragged undertaking.

©2023 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #iAlogue , #PureSchmaltz