Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Graf #6

"This is for everyone who ever Googled themselves and didn't find any answers!"

This was the first thought that came to my mind while, and after, reading about isearches. Apparently, I linger on thoughts that I think are funny, and more importantly, thoughts that I think are funny and that I came up with. It really doesn't matter if anyone is there to hear it. I can appreciate good humor alone, thank you.

Which would be a great isearch, if I understand it correctly, that is. I'd like to find out why I have an innate solitary nature. Is it a handicap or a gift? Can a handicap and a gift arise from the same source? I do enjoy others' company and very much so, but it has been more of a learned response. Like Pavlov's dog but without all the weird, dramatic innuendos. I know I'll get fed from social interaction. Smile, be kind, and eventually you will find a kin.

This leads me to another great isearch topic. To find out why and how I associate so many things together, things that may not have an obvious correlation otherwise. As my husband says, "stay on one topic!" but how can I when it is all connected? The thought of one thing fires colors, sounds and textures in my brain and I instantly jump the tracks and follow. Another association? I'm the butterfly flitting about from flower to flower and to me it all makes sense.

(All this for an isearch response?) Yes.

I'm definitely intrigued by the isearch concept. If I understand it correctly (why do I keep questioning that?) than it is quite different than the drivel taught in highschool and earlier. "Know thy subject, know thy subject" was like a mantra for any well-written report. How will we know our subject when there is absolutely no experience involved, and more than likely, not even a hint of curiosity either?

I believe the quote when it says "write what you know." But, if that doesn't work, write about yourself and find out all the things you don't know. Then put all that in a book and become David Sedaris and Augusten Burroughs who seem to do isearches with every word they publish.

1 comment:

  1. I definitely want to avoid those hs information searches, great baggy heaps of unsorted, random stuff, all punctiliously footnoted.

    Questions demand answers: focused, lithe, flexible, athletic, pointed--my ideal isearch.

    A topic in psychology or autobiography or neuro-psychology or mysticism (which are the categories I place your various tentative suggestions in) all could work but are big and demanding and necessarily indeterminate, which is fine, but--.

    If you like Burroughs and Sedaris, here's a suggestion: try an isearch question along the lines of: "Can I write something Sedaris-y that I might be pleased with, the first piece in my eventual collection?"

    Many subquestions derive from that over-arching one, but essentially you'd try writing the piece and the isearch would be a companion piece, a meta-piece, a journal about the writing of the autobio/memoir/whatever.

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