Reading Nine Horses by Billy Collins

A Theory of the Mind, Ideas, etc.

This project all started with that modest post back in December entitled “It Occurred to Me…“. Since then, I’ve been on and off obsessed with the fact that I don’t know from whence most of my ideas come. After some brief email correspondence with a couple of friends who were interested in the topic of my post, I formulated the following theory in an attempt to explain the way the mind and the realm of thought generally work. It’s very attractive to me as a theory, and I think I currently hold it or something like it as my opinion on the topic. However, I’ve never heard it suggested by anyone else before, and I don’t take that as a good sign. Then again, I may be saying nothing new and therefore demonstrating my ignorance. It may be nothing but rubbish, but it was certainly fun rubbish to come up with (or come across or be given or whatever). So, whether for entertainment value or for a serious exploration of the way the mind works, I present you with this, my reasonable speculation. Take it for what you will.

Hayden and Melissa Engagement Photos

I had the pleasure of going to a nearby park with the ever wonderful Hayden and Melissa to get some engagement photos taken. Here are two of my favorites…

Stories, the Nature of

This is this post’s second draft. I found my first attempt upon review to be snarky, cynical, and simplistic where I had tried to be witty, and so jettisoned it as primarily feigned material. I’ve boiled the main thoughts down and lopped off the extraneous mockery, leaving me with a list of assertions about the nature of stories that I now present to you bare. Boring, I know, but probably more valuable than the first draft was. Besides, I doubt that I will be able to refrain from opining about them at the end of the list.

[Insert a smooth transition into the list itself here.]

ahem.

– Stories have the interesting characteristic of being both ontologically independent and dependent things simultaneously. Their source, generally speaking, is a single person or group of people, bound by the same cultural and cognitive limitations and biases that any other person or group of people have. Once told or written, however, the story itself becomes accessible to anyone who encounters circumstances that allow interaction with it, whether or not they interact with its author(s). It is therefore entirely independent and entirely dependent upon the storyteller simultaneously.

– An analysis of a story that disregards one of its two natures will necessarily lead to error, as does any inhibition.