"And as I said to my son, 'If you wanted to volunteer
for fascinating, dangerous, necessary work,
this would be a great job to volunteer for--
trying to be a wide-awake human during a dark age
and keeping alive what you think is beautiful
and important." --Ventura/Hillman,
We've Had A Hundred Years Of Psychotherapy
And The World's Getting Worse, p237
=== +†+ === +†+ === +†+ ===

What is a Wildwood Light?

It's not exactly the deepest mystery vexing our collective mind, but here's an explanation for anyone interested:

It is a symbol of what a Christian can be in this world. The word-picture is borrowed from the imagery developed in song lyrics by Terry Scott Taylor (www.danielamos.com), and my own theory is that he owes his inspiration to for his metaphors to the work of C.S. Lewis, the classic hymn, "Church in the Wildwood," and, possibly, the writings of William Morris. This linkage of ideas might easily be dismissed as an inside joke for Taylor and Lewis fanatics, but I see it as an accurate way of viewing the who, what and how of following Jesus: The World is our own fallen, but still surprisingly lovely and loveable Earth. What once was a garden is now a brushy, scrubby forest-- still fertile and vital, but untended, undirected and unpruned-- a "wild" wood. The light is, first of all, God's Light-- shining in the Wildwood as a reminder that a Gardener was the designer and may still have specific, artistic plans for His creation. Secondly, the Wildwood Light can also be anyone of us who would like to "shine in the darkness" and help "make sense of the chaos" we find in this well-crafted, but overgrown, estate.

[more to come]

For anyone who's still reading: Here's an elaboration on

"Nothing worth havin'
comes without some kind of fight
Got to kick at the darkness
'til it bleeds daylight ..."
--Bruce Cockburn
«¤»«¤»«¤»«¤»«¤»«¤»«¤»

"Paraphrasing Francis Bacon,
one may say that superficial
and egocentric knowledge
leads to atheism,
while genuine, deep and objective study
leads to faith in God."
--Scientists Who Believe, p9
=== +†+ === +†+ ===

IN THE DARK, I AM

in the dark, I am
in the dark, and alone
my water is mud
my bread is a stone

I have but one companion
only one listening ear
he feeds on my shadows
his name is Fear

I search for a comfort
for a place I can rest
I look for the One Who Created me
and Knows me the best

I've heard stories of Him
bits and pieces, since birth
they say He Brightens your life
Gives you some worth

I look for Him always
He's Elusive and Rare
I think He's There Waiting
Someday, Somewhere

I've come close a few times
it starts to get light
it gets gray all around
'stead of the usual, black night

but always just before whiteness
while my shadows still play
I see cold, evil eyes
blocking my way

If I just had the courage
to walk past that stare
I could join the Creator
live under His Care

but I go back to the dark
cold and alone
here with my Fear
my mud and my stone

--tms, 7/14/82

300-4-L460-x-311-80-3846
My Pseudo-Submission for Ryman’s Another One Along in a Minute (and my Project #1 for IUPUI/L460) has been moved to my Hypertext Literature Blog: www.hyperlit.blogspot.com -- You're welcome to visit it often!

Have you seen Geoff Ryman's hypertext novel, 253? Wow! Check it out: http://www.ryman-novel.com/ It's a great ride ...

"I finished writing and looked up.
Don Juan was staring at me.
He shook his head from side to side and smiled.

'You really write everything?' he asked in an incredulous tone.
'Genaro says he can never be serious with you because you're always writing.
He's right; how can anyone be serious if you're always writing?'

He chuckled and I tried to defend my position.

'It doesn't matter,' he said, 'If you ever learn to see,
I suppose you must do it in your own weird way.'"
--Carlos Castenada, A Separate Reality--
Further Conversations With Don Juan, p215

Good evening, and welcome to "Ideas That Sound Good 'til You Think About 'em For More Than a Few Seconds."
I'm your host, Tim Stark, and this is the first installment of this new segment of our new show, "The Wildwood Light."

I got the idea for "The Draft Board" [patent not applied for, but it's mine, ALL MINE!] while trying to write my L460 assignment this afternoon.
I imagined a character who was into a kind of writing which was a cross between the art of composing haiku and the craft of constructing cut-and-paste ransom notes.

He saw words and ideas as though they are enzymes and chromosomes, and he liked to string the same basic elements together-- as though it was conceptual DNA, and he was the helix-master-- in as many ways as possible before collecting another set. He'd read publications like "Outside" & "ESPN: The ..." & "Scenario" & "The Comics Journal" & "Cornerstone" & "Touchstone" magazines. When specific words struck him as significant-- protean and fertile, encompassing and encapsulating-- he stuck them to a page of his own design. Its surface was covered in Post-it™ note adhesive. He could organize the word sets on the framed field of sticky stuff in a quasi-monologue, semi-sonnet a/o neo-narrative, then title, date and number-code it. When it provided a certain sense of something right, he would then lay the seeded Draft Board [copyrights reserved, but what's the point, really?] on the photocopier and print out the text for a master/hard-copy of each version/string. Then, he could take all the semes off and start again. So many variations were possible within the constraints of these arbitrary boundaries. Possibly fascinating (might make a fun game, as an alternative to the poem-magnet sets found in so many PBS-related mail order catalogs these days ...) in a "but, why?!" kinda way ... chances are, our next episode will profile something even more merely-superficially-useful. Count on it!

"The inventory of philosophical vocabulary
used in classical China to define this kind of "knowing"
tends to be one of tracing out, unraveling, penetrating,
and getting through. . . to trace out the connections
among its joints and sinews, to discern the patterns in things,
and, on becoming fully aware of the changing shapes
and conditions of things, to anticipate what will ensue from them."
--Sun Tzu: The Art Of Warfare, pp56-57 translated by Roger T. Ames

[This is my day #13,713 -- give or take. How many days are you?]

I enjoyed my IUPUI Eng-Grad internship with Professor Helen Schwartz. I was one of her course assistants in the Spring '99 Semester, and I learned much about both the how-to's and why-to's-or-not-to's of the production and consumption of hypertext literature. As part of the course-work, I participated in the "final exam"-- a chat-room and forum-based exchange of essays and responses by all the class members. Here's my essay for that assignment. Professor Schwartz encouraged me to publish it on the web. It only took me about a year-and-a-half to get that done ...

"How Is It That a Collection of Ideas Become Valuable?"
Welcome to the information-neighborhood. Today, we're talking about how ideas become valuable as a result of being collected into groups. He uses a more war-oriented metaphor than I choose for learning situations, but J.B. Phillips contends, "If words are to enter men's minds and bear fruit, they must be the right words shaped cunningly to pass men's defenses and explode silently and effectually within their minds."

We might also express Phillips' statement in another way:
aaaaaaa
bb
cc
dddddddd
eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
fffff
gg
hhhhhh
Iiiiiiiiii
llllll
mmmmm
nnnnnnnnnnnnnn
ooooo
ppp
rrrrrrrr
sssssssssssss
tttttttttttt
uuuu
www
x
yyyy
,
''
""
.
<29 blank spaces>

These symbol "blocks" were stacked to make the words which made the idea Mr. Phillips wanted to communicate, and, in the same way, collected ideas, symbols and expressions become valuable by means of a personality's intentional, creative act. The "shaping" process is the "how?," but it requires a "who?," for it to happen, and that who is anyone and everyone and me and you.

Over the course of time and by the combined acts of idea-shaping by every personality to ever live, symbols-- including those alphabetical and numerical-- have been filled with meaning. Not all symbols mean the same things to all people, but they do have meaning, and we use them to make a constant flow of valuable ideas. This doesn't just go for fine art or "important" writings, we collect ideas about even the most mundane things, and, paradoxically, even these collections have value. Does it look like rain today? How many days now have I used this disposable razor? When did I put this ziploc of hamburger in the fridge? Did I leave the iron on when I left for work this morning? What did my boss mean by that remark about office restructuring? The personality behind the book of Ecclesiastes said it this way, "'Look,' says the Teacher, 'this is what I have discovered: 'Adding one thing to another to discover the scheme of things ...'" He was big on schemas long before there was any need to consider mourning "the death of the book."

Given the opportunity, each of us could use the letters and markers and spaces listed above to make our own "collection of ideas," and we might even find that we could form a message which had great meaning and value-- if not for everyone on the world wide web, then at least for ourselves. Linda Flower, in her College Composition and Communication quarterly article, "Cognition, Context and Theory Building" (October 1989), makes the point this way, "... as theorists and researchers, we inevitably, constantly, and energetically impose meaning and pattern on the data of experience. . . . Given enough time, people, including teachers, researchers, and literary critics, will always perceive patterns, of some sort, in anything." She goes on to say that the only remaining question about these constructions is whether or not anyone else will also see the same connections. Their value, though, is established regardless of whether or not they are considered significant by anyone else.

If you've ever hiked a trail, you've probably seen small stacks of stones called cairns. Grand Canyon guides have been known to point them out with a statement, "If you see at least three stones piled up on each other, you know for sure that it's a trail-guide and not a natural formation." Even three stones can be collected into a valuable idea. But only as the product of someone's "cunning" to shape them into a potentially life-saving statement. Simple? Yes. Valuable? Priceless!

This also illustrates well one of the reasons I believe in "Truth with a capital t": Even people who claim to believe in chance as the basis of life and meaning still live (including, to speak into phones, drive to Grandma's, eat at Joe's, claim copyrights, take photographs, shoot basketballs, choreograph dance steps, read textbooks, buy flowers for Mom, mow lawns, work overtime, hope for a raise and promotion, and make bank deposits) as though they believed the exact opposite! We all act like order and design and creativity are what make the difference in life, what produces meaning and value and purpose and satisfaction. Every creative act is also valuable, regardless of whether or not it has the appearance of order (a Jackson Pollack "splatter" painting has the surface image of chaos, but it can only be completed by a carefully planned process within a carefully constructed framework). Even a polemic against the concept of an ordered, designed universe is presented by someone who "got their thoughts together."

Ideas and symbols are made value-rich as they are collected by the intentional act of a personality (not just humans, for sure!), and these acts, no matter how mundane, are a constantly renewable resource whose market value is not diminished by their abundance.

We might be concerned about how we'll manage information in the new millenium and on the information superhighway, and we might be inclined to extend T.S. Eliot's sad question, "Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?" to include, "Where is the information we have lost in the proliferation of raw data?," but even on our most input-overloaded day, we'll still be creating collections of ideas which serve valuable purposes in our lives.

How?

Like the ultimate neighbor, Mr. Rogers, says, "By just your being you."

"He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distinguish, and yet prefer that which is truly better, he is the true wayfaring Christian. I cannot praise a fugitive and cloister's vertue, unexercis'd & unbreath'd, that never sallies out and sees her adversary, but slinks out of the race, where that immortall garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat . .. . [T]hat which purifies us is triall, and triall is by what is contrary. . . . [T]rue temperance [is that which can] see and know, and yet abstain." [1644] --quoted from Milton's Areopagitica by Wayne C. Booth in The Company We Keep, p488