Imagination

Imagination

by | Apr 10, 2013 | Rambling

“The Starry Night” by Vincent Van Gogh inspires imagination.

The ability to form thoughts and even sensations without the use of our physical senses is imagination. It is critical to problem solving, creativity, and learning. Although using imagination was frowned upon at one time, we now know that it is a critical thought process. Without imagination, we don’t have complex math, ways to explore and formulate scientific theories, or any of the artistic ways we express ourself.

Have you everasked, “How do I do this?”

And someone answered, “Use your imagination.”

The truth is, without imagination we wouldn’t have speech and could not express ourselves. Part of our thought process is to first imagine and then try. If we are even minutely successful, we will attempt to perfect the action until it works.

It has been said that expression is to complete a thought process. Writers know all about this. They envision a story or other work. Whether fictional or not, everything written begins as a single thought and builds as it is written. Some people plan their written work, but even the plans and outlines are only imagined thoughts to create a framework upon which the completed work is an expression of the writers imagination–even when that completed work is non-fiction.

Non-writers know all about it as well. They get this idea and sit down and try to express it. They move so fast, sentences go from one thought to the next without ending. A single sentence may contain many thoughts, little or no punctuation as they move their imagination onto the screen. Many things are left out, because they are not part of their imagination. When its done, they have a skeletal ghost that may or not be turned into something viable.

They have to learn to slow down and identify each imagined thought and convert it into words that other people are going to understand. Language use is a big barrier. Many people are used to talking, but not writing. The spoken word is much different than the written word, and moving from one to the other is not always easy.

Writers have trained themselves or learned through an educational process that language is a tool for conveying thoughts–imagination if you will–onto paper that enables others to share in the writer’s imagination.

About now Dear Reader, you’re thinking…wait a minute. That article on particle physics theory I read last week certainly wasn’t the product of someone’s imagination. Those were facts and…

Stop. Yes it was the product of someone’s imagination. First, the theory had to be imagined before it could be explored. Then, someone had to imagine ways to explore it. Next, the theory was tested using methods that someone imagined would work. In all probability, not every method worked; some did, some didn’t. Then a writer came along, took what was learned and imagined a way to put that on paper to express to you, the reader, how to explain that exact particle physics theory.

The entire thing was a product of imagination put to use, even though what was read was entirely factual.

On the fictional side, imagination allows a writer to create people, characters, worlds, and places that don’t exist. A good writer engages the reader, suspends their belief in reality for a time, and takes them to another place and time where they become immersed in a different reality created entirely from imagination.

People enjoy reading because it stimulates their imagination in ways that no other medium can, and that is why I believe that books and the written word will be around for a long time. When reading, we use our imagination to experience something that our senses cannot. We don’t smell the rose bush in the story, but our imagination reaches out and stimulates that part of our brain that could smell it, if it was there, and if the suspension of reality is deep enough, we can indeed stop and smell the roses.

Imagination is not unique to the human experience. Animals dream and dreams are an extension of reality into the world of sleep. Our brains will even incorporate external stimuli into our dreams in order to keep us from waking.

We can watch a dog dream. Their eyes move beneath their lids, paws twitch, and legs will even run if the dream is intense enough. They whimper, yelp, squeak, growl. They are dreaming. Their imagination has taken over and they are experiencing something that is not actually happening.

My theory is one reason animals dream is that dreaming is a big part of the learning process. When I’m teaching the puppy, she is learning and after a short time may begin to show signs of understanding what I’m trying to show her. Later, she goes to sleep and will dreams. After she wakes, that understanding is much more apparent. My theory is that in the dream, she learned and made connections she was not making while I was teaching her.

Where does your imagination take you? What have you leaned through your own imagination?

Copyright © 2013 MJ Logan Writer All Rights Reserved

No republication without expressly written consent.

Havoc

Havoc

by | Apr 9, 2013 | Rambling

A Latin Dictionary by Dr. Marcus Gossler

Havoc

Havoc. Mirriam-Webster defines Havoc as “1. Wide and General Destruction” or “2. Great Confusion and Disorder.”

Those are what I call specific definitions with a very general meeting.

Here are two examples: Look at the havoc that puppy wrought in this room. Look at the havoc caused by that nuclear bomb. The first example might inspire images of a room with a chewed up couch, emptied wastebasket and the shredded contents strewn everywhere and puppy messes on the carpet. While not pleasant, it is not nearly as disturbing as a completely destroyed major city with the few survivors suffering from radiation burns and sickness.

Both examples are correct uses of “havoc” because they both describe wide and general destruction, albeit from two different points of view.

This is one kind of trouble the English language causes for people who learned it as a second language and don’t necessarily speak it everyday. Point of view is a big deal in English and it causes havoc — great confusion and disorder — for people who don’t use it often or are new to it.

Often our slang creates havoc for the same people. A common slang phrase is, “come on.” It can express disbelief or surprise or dismay. These are slang meanings that have little to do with the words used. A very similar phase, “come on,” orders or compels another to go along with in a physical way, or to join them in accepting an idea. As a direct meaning, come means to go to a place or person. You can teach your puppy, “come” and it will go to you.

A man who had just emmigrated to the United States came to work for me. He spoke “Perfect” English with flawless diction and almost no accent at all. In spite of his book-perfect English, he had great difficulty with certain words and phrases due lack of knowledge of slang words and phrases, like ‘Come On.’

“Come on, Charles.”

“Okay. Where are going?”

Situational context is another point at which plays havoc on those lacking experience.

How we interpret “come on” depends on the context in which it is used. If told they won the lottery, a person might say, “come on,” in a disbelieving tone. Or someone might say, “come on,” I’m going to pick up my lottery winnings. The context defines the meaning in both cases.

When someone is unfamiliar with contextual use of words or phrases, those words and phrases can create havoc in their mind. Confusion. Great confusion if something is important enough to affect them or cause them trouble.

Meme: You Keep Using That Word. I Don't Think You know What It MeansConsider the havoc created by imprecise use of words or poorly constructed sentences. Leave out a comma and you invite people to engage in cannibalism. “Let’s eat grandma.” It may seem silly, but the phrase does mean that you and those you are speaking to should eat your grandmother.

What was actually meant was, “Let’s eat, Grandma.”

Here’s we have added two elements. The comma after eat interjects a pause which concludes the action of the sentence. Grandma is capitalized which indicates a proper noun and the meaning becomes clear. You are addressing your grandmother and telling her you want to eat.

Imagine the havoc if your grandmother thought you were going to eat her.

Often, in the writer groups on social media, someone will post that they don’t need no stinking grammar rules. As you parse their logic in the post, they make one error after another and the post is hard to read. You can’t reason with them and their arguments lack a foundation.

While proofreading or beta reading a book, I sometimes run across a word that just doesn’t fit no matter how I try to twist the sentence. Invariably, the writer thought it had an entirely different meaning.

Using good English is important. Although the examples given here are simple, they do highlight ways to abuse the English language and create…havoc.

Copyright © 2013 MJ Logan Writer All Rights Reserved

No republication without expressly written consent.

Grotesque

Grotesque

by | Apr 7, 2013 | Rambling

Gargoyles are actually rainspouts to get rid of water during a rainstorm. They are often modeled after a mythical monster with batlike wings. Picture by Dean Moriarty

“It’s Just Grotesque!”

I once had a college professor that taught advanced math. One of his favorite words to use in reference to certain ways of doing things was “Grotesque.” He used it as a teaching tool.

It is doubtful many people ever pronounced his name correctly, or even got the spelling right. We’ll just call him Dr. Math because, well, I was one of those people.

Dr. Math had his own grotesque manners in certain respects, beyond eccentric if you will. For one thing, as dean of mathematics and author of numerous books on mathematics, he got away with things other professors did not. Like smoking in class. Yes, it was the early eighties, but smoking in class was forbidden, even for the instructors.

Dr. Math chain-smoked Carlton cigarettes, one right after another, all day long. Only once did I see him light a cigarette with a lighter; an elegant, slender gold lighter with an electronic spark that ignited the lighter fluid with an audible snap.

The first day of Applied Analytic Geometry with Calculus was the first time many of those in my class ever met him. He showed up in a rather grotesque fashion, one shirt tail hanging out, unkempt hair, glasses askew and of course, a Carleton between the ring and middle fingers of his left hand. We all sort of chuckled. What sort of mad scientist professor was this?

Though he carried the class textbook with him to every class, he never once opened it the entire semester. He would quote from pages, tell us about incorrect answers in the back of the book, and joke about mathematics the way some people joke about sex, and then relate it to something in a specific paragraph in the text.

He would talk at a maddening pace you could barely follow and write just as fast on the chalkboard. In the beginning, the chalk squealed so much we were all cringing. By the end of the semester we were all immune. He would take a puff on the Carleton, switch it to his left hand, and write on the board. Then another switch, a puff, and switch back.

One day, just as he was about to light another Carleton from the almost-spent butt of the one he held, someone asked a question that lit up a bulb in this man’s brain. The smoke fell from his lips to the floor and he crushed it with the toe of a shoe never once polished after it left the factory. He wrote and talked, explained and waved and poked at the textbook while listing pages of information and facts so obscure they were unknown to modern man until he discovered them. When finished, he took a deep breath, raised his hand to his lips and attempted to take a puff from the stick of chalk.

Disgusted, he threw the stick of chalk to the floor. “Aahhh! Grotesque!” I can still hear it. That was the one and only time I saw him use a lighter, to light up another Carleton, in spite seeing him light and smoke hundreds if not thousands of cigarettes.

To be fair, he was a man of great intelligence. He held three doctorates from different universities and what was truly amazing about this man, was the way he could apply mathematics to anything. It didn’t matter if you were studying electrical engineering as I was, chemical engineering, physics, architectural engineering, or anything else, if you had a question that involved math and how it pertained to your field of study, you were better off going to him than anyone in the other departments.

To see him outside of class, on his way to or in his car was grotesque in itself. His London Fog coat, once handsome and befitting a man of his stature, was stained, covered with small burn holes, and smelled of stale cigarette smoke. I’m sure he never noticed.

In our engineering classes, many of us used state-of-the-art calculators and some even had hand-held computers. Some of our engineering professors used calculators, others used slide rules. One even had an abacus in his office and would use it to demonstrate certain principals of mathematics.

Dr. Math, I’m quite sure, didn’t own such crude instruments of calculation. He had a better instrument—his brain. Often, if presented a problem that required say, the cosine of a angle, he would gaze into the air a few seconds (usually a good moment for a puff), then write the cosine on the board to ten decimal places. Our calculators would give us eight places back in those days.

It was revealed one day that he was calculating trig functions in his head. He used an old obscure form of calculus which (among other things) allows you to calculate trig functions. Most people look them up in a table; even calculators look them up in a table. The method isn’t complicated but requires a lot of number crunching. Just to do an approximation that is not even close to accurate requires more temporary results than most of the population can remember. By carrying it out ten places, he eliminated the errors inherent in his method.

His accuracy was dead on. To eight decimal places anyway — that was as far as any of us could be sure of, since none of us had the means to calculate trig functions out to ten places, even with a calculator or hand held computer. Imagine doing computations that involved many numbers carried out to ten or twelve decimal places. Can you even remember two such numbers while computing a third?

For some, to even think of doing such a calculation is…grotesque.

Despite his grotesque eccentricities, he was a very kind and patient man. Once I begged off work so I could go to his office for help. I arrived at six; he was just leaving and I met him in the hallway.

“Michael! Ahhhhhh. What brings you up here?”

I explained that I was lost in the current fuzz of the current topic and how it related to my other classes, which relied heavily on understanding the math. He all but dragged me back to his office (Thank heavens I smoked or I never would have survived that experience) and spent more than four hours tutoring me until he was certain I understood. About nine in the evening he suddenly remembered he had been on his way home and called his wife.

Most professors would have sent me to a teacher’s aide or told me to hire an upperclassman tutor for that level of help.

Despite his amazing level of knowledge and the fact this his brain operated on a level most people could not even comprehend, he could break it down, make it real, and explain how it worked.

Because he knew mathematics so well, he could converse on topics he had never studied. Certain properties of electricity can only be completely understood if you know calculus. He had never studied electricity in the literal sense, but math was his language and he could talk about electricity and explain things about it based simply on on his knowledge of mathematics.

Once, he talked about vibrations and frequencies and the guys from architectural engineering were nodding their heads. It made sense to them. And it made sense to me and my electrical engineering classes. It also made sense to the guys in biomedical engineering and the other fields of study present in his class.

It was clear. He taught that class to students from many fields because he could do that. He was the guy who could make sense of things in as general a way as you needed, or be so specific as to narrow it down to specific aspect of any field.

Often, he would demonstrate what he called the “brute force” method of doing things (which included the afore mentioned trig function calculations.) He’d break down a complex equation into forty iterations written on a chalkboard, then he would stop and wave his arms about.

“It’s Just Grotesque!” he would exclaim!

With wide sweeps of his arms, he’d erase the chalkboard with his shirt sleeves and write out the elegant version of the solution.

Sometimes I think about Dr. Math and his odd, eccentric behavior. He appeared to be in his middle fifties at the time I knew him so it is possible, if the Carletons didn’t kill him, that he is still alive and pondering the great universe in his own world of mathematics.

Do you know anyone eccentric? Grotesque in the sense they don’t fit in with the rest of society, even with the eccentrics among us?

Copyright © 2013 MJ Logan Writer All Rights Reserved

No republication without expressly written consent.

Fishing

Fishing

by | Apr 6, 2013 | Rambling

Flathead Catfish by Eric Engbretson, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Fishing is an attempt to catch fish. Notice I wrote “attempt” because there are no guarantees. One individual brought before a judge for fishing out of season tried to reason with the judge by saying he hadn’t caught any fish, so he wasn’t breaking the law.

The judge responded by saying, “That’s why they call it fishing.”

The poacher was fined, court costs added, and he was sent on his way.

There’s many ways of fishing. For sport fishermen, there are hook and line methods that use live or dead bait, or artificial lures. Some individuals like to catch fish by hand and there are several methods to that bit of madness. Commercial fishermen use nets, seines, traps, pots, or even use a hook and line. If you’re good with a bow and arrow, that works in shallow, reasonably clear water. It wasn’t all that long ago that spears were the most successful method of fishing.

Of all the methods, I think noodling is one of the craziest. Mainly it is used for catching large catfish by hand, but some folks have used it for catching other species.

Why is noodling crazy? Picture a river or lake with an undercut bank or a deep pile of brush. The little underwater caves are the favorite hangouts for big, flathead catfish in the twenty to sixty pound weight class. The flatheads like the holes because they can back in. It gives them a sense of security since a bigger fish can’t sneak up and grab them.

The noodler gets into the water and submerges to carefully feel around in the cave for a fish. When he finds one, he tries to find the mouth, again by carefully feeling around. The catfish will suddenly lunge forward in an attempt to escape, and the noodler puts his hand right into the gaping maw and grabs the fish. Then the big wrestling match is on and there is no guarantee for either side. It’s more than a little nuts if you ask me. People have died wrestling with big catfish. I personally will claim my fifth amendment rights if asked if I ever participated in this sort of adventure.

Another method of catching fish is often associated with trout. It’s called “tickling trout” and uses considerable more finesse than noodling. The tickler finds a place where trout like to rest and waits for one to appear. Carefully, he slides his hand up alongside the fish without touching it, then very gently rubs the belly of the fish.

Here, different methods come into play. The tickler in a hurry will attempt to grab the fish just behind the head. The more patient fisherman will ease his finger back and forth until the fish becomes relaxed. He then grasps the fish without a struggle and dinner is almost ready.

Tickling was once a favorite way of poaching since there was no evidence of illegal equipment.

Once when I was boy of about fourteen, I had this amazing idea. I donned a swimming mask, snorkle and fins, took a short line with a hook and baited it with a worm. I swam to a log that bluegills liked to hide under, and dangled my worm in front of the biggest bluegill I could see. I therein learned a lesson about doing things the easy way.

The bluegill grabbed the worm and it was hooked. About one second later, a northern pike the size of my leg came out nowhere, grabbed the bluegill and disappeared. The line cut deep into my hand before it snapped and I should have gone for stitches, but didn’t want to tell anyone how I tried to cheat the system. I still have the scar, though now faded after too many years.

Of all the stories told, few are more entertaining or more exaggerated than the fish story about the one that got away. A favorite of mine was the one where I lost a huge northern pike on a fishing trip in Canada as 6-year-old boy. When I was about ten, Dad told me the fish was getting bigger every year because I could stretch my arms farther apart. As it turned out, the fish in that story was about two or two and half feet long. I still tell that story now and then, but try to keep the size of the fish in perspective.

Fishing. Give a man a fish and you give him dinner. Teach him to fish and you’ve fed him for life — as long as the fish are biting.

Do You Fish? What’s your favorite type of fishing or favorite fish to catch?

Copyright © 2013 MJ Logan Writer All Rights Reserved

No republication without expressly written consent.

Home is Where

Home is Where

by | Apr 4, 2013 | Rambling

Home is where the heart is, so says the old saying. Photo by Bgulac at Pixabay

Home is Where…

Home is where the heart is. Hearth and Home. Home seems like a place, but it is not. Home is abstract and real at the same time. There is also your home, and the home that is someone else’s. You can tell the difference, and so can they.

For some, the streets are home. Others call their tiny apartment, their suburban house, or a secluded mansion, home.

Going home is a real action, to a real place–though I just said it wasn’t–because in your mind, that is where home is. It is where you live, or not. For some, home is a place where they once lived and no longer do, but going home doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing to two people, even though they live in the same place. Usually, going home is a good thing filled with memories and warmth; a family place of love and belonging. A place that smells right, feels right, and welcomes you with open arms.

For some people, going home is the worst thing. Fear bubbles up, an ill feeling. They don’t want to go home. And yet, they still call that place home.

Home can be multiple places. I am at home in my house, or at my family’s north-woods cabin. Those places feel like home and they are home to me. If my wife is with me, they feel even more like home.

Once, I lived alone in a small apartment. I never called it home.

“Where ya going?”

Back to my place.

Back to my apartment.

Back to the basement (garden apartment.)

Back to… anyplace but home.

College dorm rooms, after college apartments with roommates. A place in the country. A place in the city. Always our place, or my place. Never home.

How does one explain home? Maybe, home really is where your heart is. And despite that home is not a good place for some people, somehow, in some way, that is where their heart is.

Growing up, home was where I lived. Mom, Dad, my brothers. It felt good to be home and I wanted to be there. Now, home is still where I live and feels good to be here. Some people would call me a home body. I like being home. I enjoy it.

Oh sure, I love to get out and go on my explorations and my adventures. Go fishing on some remote lake or sit in a duck blind on a frozen marsh with the wind and snow in my face.

Where do I go after after the adventure? I go home.

Home. Where is your home?

Copyright © 2013 MJ Logan Writer All Rights Reserved

No republication without expressly written consent.