Monday, August 15, 2005

Random Thinker No More

"You talk like a fire hose let loose on the floor," he said, and he had just met me.

"Ah, you've noticed that I'm a random thinker." I said, attempting to make light of his remark. Then I saw myself as a random thinker, but the fire hose was more than I'd pictured.

In the world of people who discuss things in person, I tend to make huge leaps of content, endowing my friends with prior knowledge they may not have. When time and friends don't mind, I'll explore a tangent (or twenty) to see where it takes the conversation. Yet like a child going off into the woods, I drop bread crumbs as I go, so I can find my way back to the topic we left. It's embarrassing to get lost in the woods, knowing you left a perfectly fine conversation behind.

Today, I've been reading the web without a net. I just jumped into uncharted cyberspace. I pushed off from those beautiful, easy-to-read sites that sing with well-written prose as if I were swimming. Now I'm forced to reassess my definition of random thinker and in essence, my definition of myself. It had never crossed my leapfrogging little-kid's mind that random thinker might literally mean random thinker. Yet after randomly reading the Internet, my eyes hurt, and my brain feels mushy from trying to connect two thoughts sitting side by side in the same paragraph.

Suppose that the old Richard Guindon cartoon, "Writing is nature's way of letting you know how sloppy your thinking is." is true. Then the random thinking that runs rampant in run-on sentences and running rosters across the web is an anal-retentive, eighth-grade English teacher's idea of Dante's inferno in need of a good mopping. It makes me giggle to think I'll soon be seeing commercials for a neurological syndrome called RRRTS--Reaction to Reading Random Thinking Syndrome. On second thought, eewwwww, maybe I've got it.

Linear and sequential are starting to look strangely interesting to me. Concrete thinking sounds like a comfort.
I'm starting to think I don't mind being called a fire hose.


A fire hose has purpose, direction, and focus, even when it's loose on the floor.
——me strauss Letting me be

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Brilliant. I haven't read a better description of random blog reading on the net! But thinking at all, random or not, has to be better than no thinking at all... ;)

Well, I guess this will be a mutual arrangement; I can see that I am going to have to come back and read more, just as you commented on mine. Let us hope that we do not disappoint each other. :)

Anonymous said...

Ah, and I see you have joined WBA. I'm so glad; I thought of suggesting it to you but then I didn't want to seem too pushy...

Anonymous said...

Oh, by the way: to get an idea of what WBA is all about, read the earliest posts in the News Section. I went over a lot of the theory in the first few days of its existence.

"ME" Liz Strauss said...

I'm going to be a regular visitor at www.madtv.me.uk/goneaway.aspx
to read your blog as well. Thanks for the visits.

It's tag. You're it!

me

Anonymous said...

Tag is an unfortunate word in the blogosphere - it puts one in mind of the dreadful memes that float perpetually from blog to blog. I confess to having done one (but excuse myself by saying that it was an unusually good one, it was the occasion of my 100th post, I had to write something and my brain was completely empty); never again!

Anyway, you're bookmarked. Darn close to getting the highest accolade of all, too: inclusion in the much-sought-after, exclusive, exalted blogroll of Gone Away. We shall see (also depends on whether I can find the time to edit the links file - all handmade stuff, you know).

"ME" Liz Strauss said...

The kid wants to get off my computer and go out to play. Guess that's what prompted my unfortunate choice of words.

I thank you sincerely and deeply for the accolades. I have viewed said blogroll. Alas, I fear that inclusion is a honor tht needs to be earned.

The brain is frying and I still need to write a story about the three city pigs. (Eeewwwww another faux pas, probably shouldn't mention frying and pigs in the same sentence.)

smile,
me

Anonymous said...

Mmmmm, I smell bacon. :)

I was joking about the exalted state of my blogroll, of course. But I do, in reaction to the common blogosphere tendency to put anyone on their blogroll in the hope of it being reciprocated, , strive to include only quality links there. After all, I think a blogroll says something about the blogger, too. ;)

"ME" Liz Strauss said...

I think your blog and your blogroll are well worth touting. I agree that the blogroll speaks for the blogger. As the garden speaks for the house.

As for the bacon, those pigs are still alive.

me

Anonymous said...

Thank you. And I'm sorry I frightened the pigs. :>

"ME" Liz Strauss said...

You're welcome.

They're Illinois pigs. They don't scare easily.

Anonymous said...

Excellent, that was really well explained and helpful