origins

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part one: paradigm

hello and welcome, future friend. i have a story i'd like to tell you, but the truth is i'm not sure how to tell it. all i know for sure is that it's time to start writing. so here i am, sitting in my tiny room, trying to organize my cloudy thoughts on this uncharacteristically sunny seattle day.

the problem is that i want to tell you about a paradigm, and paradigms are fundamentally loopy, circular creatures. i'm afraid it's an inevitable consequence of the way they're constructed, since even the most complex paradigm essentially collapses into networks of definition, and definitions can only be specified reciprocally. the idea is communicated best by saussure's famous analogy of the chessboard, which compares the internal interdependencies of language to the strategic meanings of chess positions. just like the chess pieces, the value of any individual sign is a direct consequence of how all the other signs are positioned within the linguistic system. 










////scratch

"what, animals?" i hear you asking. well, it seems to me that good thinking doesn't flow from the intellect, but from the imagination, and the imagination is something deep, dark, and largely autonomous, a kind of black hole at the center of consciousness. the only way to discover what's lurking within it is to mount an expedition, which means that we can't just play around with language——we have to actually leave the house, if you see what i mean, and open ourselves up to some adventure. but now i really am getting ahead of myself, because it is precisely the danger of real adventure that requires us to spend some time in preparation.

my first instinct is to jump right in, open cold, hit the lights, write something cutting and dramatic. but i’m also wary of saying too much too soon. experience has taught me that the best remedy for difficult subject matter is a methodical approach, not a bold one. weird stories have a tendency to be dismissed even under the best circumstances, and if they're not articulated carefully and deliberately then they really are doomed from the outset. i wish it wasn't so, future friend, but i think it's best if we prepare the stage before unleashing the animals; i only want to make sure we don't end up devoured by them.