The New York Sophist

Moving is one of these things that is so disruptive it’s hard to consider it as anything other than disruption itself. There is no way – at least for me – to put things where they go since there is no where they go when you are in a new spot. Luckily I have a new roommate who is excellent at organziational skill, planning, and vision, and has made this place pretty suitable so far.

Still trying to figure out where to work. Uncharacteristically, I type this on my PC at my desk – not where the blog muse used to live (perhaps the muse has moved simultaneously?). Traditionally, I write blog entries on my chromebook at the kitchen table, or on the couch while watching the local morning news and weather. Now that is a historical location for invention that doesn’t seem to have been packed or perhaps was damaged during transit.

Moving Day, May 2021 (My photo)

There’s nothing like the auspicious, creepy, odd feeling of standing in your old apartment, free of all your things that made it yours, wondering about it. Same feeling in a new place as your boxes are coming in slowly. What is this space? That feeling is a rare one so I like to stand around and feel it, just to be able to remember.

The biggest thing about this old apartment is how much it creaks when there’s no furniture in there. I guess perhaps we could say that the weight of hundreds of books took a toll on the floor. I will erase this line if I learn that my old landlord reads my blog.

The new place is coming together and feeling good, but the most difficult thing to move in is practices. This is my attempt at starting up the weekly blogging practice once again, something I really love and enjoy but is so hard to make space for in the day. Why is that? Why are practices so hard to pack up and move?

I love technology and computers and all that, but I will never be able to give up having a paper diary to keep my day-to-day life organized. I took some time over Christmas and New Year’s to chill out, and after that took this planner I ordered off the shelf and started filling it in.

The first thing I put in there are the important university dates. After that, I will put in some personal goals in the form of dates with some reminders (2 weeks from finishing X on a date 2 weeks ahead of when I wanted something accomplished). This has been my strategy for so long I wonder if I will ever move to using Google calendar or anything like that.

I do use the digital calendars to help coordinate with other people, but I do not use it for “me to me” communication. I would miss every appointment. Likewise, Google calendar often gets things wrong, inappropriately correcting the date or time of a meeting based on where someone else is in the world.

As far as notes, I move back and forth between options. Sometimes I will write on paper or in a notebook, other times type directly into Google Documents, which is the best program for note taking as it’s searchable and easy to copy and paste into more formal writing.

I wonder what it is that keeps me using paper planners. One thing I think it might be is being able to open it up and seeing the whole week written out there. This helps me every morning as I’m waking up become the sort of me I need to be to do all that stuff. If I see every day that there’s a meeting on Thursday, I’m in a better spot in my head for participating in that meeting when it comes around. Not sure how true this is, just a feeling.

Also something more permanent is conveyed when I write something down in the planner, it helps me accept the reality of what needs to be done. I don’t get that feeling from the computer.

In terms of drafting and writing though, the computer is where it’s at. There’s nothing that works as well as opening up a blank document and going to town on it. This I can’t really do with a paper journal, although I can write fragmentary lines or notes in one.

I’ve been talking a lot about writing process with a friend, from the start of composition and generation of ideas to the way that a thesis gets mapped out, or at least how I do it.

So through these conversations about something totally unrelated to this post, I’ve been thinking that most ideas for an essay or for a video or whatever I’m trying to make are best thought of in terms of 3 movements that move through the idea through different perspectives.

Rhetoric, debate, argumentation are all perspectives that when looked through at an idea reveal something we were unable to see before (or even something we create through looking differently).

I’ve talked and written about the importance of the presence of uncertainty in life and how rhetorically it’s a powerful resource for invention. There are other things to explore here, like uncertainty in relation to the audience (Universal Audience theory could benefit from this), delivery, and discussions about proof/evidence.

As a starting point, through this three movement process I’m playing with I’ve come up with the following way to approach the subject of how to teach uncertainty:

1. Strategies to avoid seeing uncertainty as a problem to address via total elimination (perhaps the only way to deal with it that we are taught?).
2. How to use uncertainty as a site for rhetorical invention and generation of ideas without the requirement that uncertainty efface itself in order to achieve this.
3. How to create uncertainty out of rhetorical situations where the controversy or audiences feel there are very clear reasons and positions out there – making uncertainty out of the tools and materials that indicate certainty (not just for fun but for important rhetorical epistemic impact).

I think these are movements of the same argument – that uncertainty is important, teachable, not to be eliminated, and an important part of life. This allows a sort of managed way to write about it (which is also a way to think about it and think through it).

It’s Friday night and normally I’m pretty energetic and excited. Tonight I’m worn out, and I think it’s because I spent most of the week working on an essay that I should have done last month. With all the changes and the almost-taking-a-buyout business I can forgive myself the slip this time. After all it’s better than my typical writing excuses such as “video game” or “too much pizza.”

I’m frustrated because I am not sure why I’m so tired after working on that piece and getting it finalized. I really shouldn’t be. It wasn’t epic, didn’t require a ton of research, and was pretty easy to write and edit. I think it makes sense and will be helpful for the intended audience. So I shouldn’t be tired. Instead, I’m mad and tired.

My mind goes back to the start of the week and a Monday video call with a friend and colleague where we were discussing metaphors for kinds of writing. He was talking about the kind of writing one does on comprehensive exams: The kind meant to prove that you that you can move heavy ideas around properly and get them in position. I talked about how annoying that rhetoric is because it doesn’t soar, and it’s not particularly “cool.” He called it positioning and then I responded with, “It’s like being one of those guys with the orange lights who are moving the plane out of the gate and onto the tarmac.” Bingo.

Photo by Zamir Yusof on Unsplash

Tarmac Rhetoric – the kind of rhetoric that moves extremely bulky powerful ideas into place so that someone else can soar with them. Someone else can see the 30,000 foot view, someone else can feel the rush of the ground moving away rapidly. But you get to move this majestic machinery – which cannot soar or be elegant on the ground – out of a tiny space and into a less tiny area so it can move to a narrow but long area so that it can take off.

Tarmac rhetoric isn’t heavy. Planes aren’t heavy really. They have a weight, but it has to consider fuel, luggage and passengers. Planes are pretty light. They are designed to stay aloft. But they are very bad at moving themselves around and into position to lift everyone on board into the sky and sail them toward a destination somewhere quick.

I’m pretty sure this piece I finished drafting today was tarmac rhetoric and a pretty good case of it too. It sets up the ability of others to take off and go in a lot of directions quickly, lightly, and impressively. But in order for them to do that, I have to wave the little orange lights, stand in the heat, and make sure it gets into position on the tarmac.

Do we teach tarmac rhetoric? Do we teach positioning the “Wings that give our weighted words flight,” to quote Kenneth Burke kind of? What does that teaching look like? Who are we in the relationship to lifting, transforming, transportive rhetoric when we are the ones who help move the awkward beast out of the space it doesn’t belong and into the place where it can sit for a bit before it launches up and away, shining?