Ideation in Normal entries

I used to think in stories and poetry. As obvious as that sounds to me, it might not be that obvious, I don’t know, on one level I think there’s only a fraction of a degree of separation between anyone. That’s the healthy level I think, if not the most precise. Uniqueness is an anti-social thinking disorder, look em up. We all have a lot of them, the difference between healthy and unhealthy is a matter of frequency, sort of like the difference between someone who drinks and an alcoholic, though, as any alcoholic will tell you, frequency is not the only yard stick. As any alcoholic who doesn’t know they’re an alcoholic will tell you, frequency isn’t even a tool of measurement. If I’m right about the fraction of a degree of separation, you, like me, know when we let our anti-social off the leash — it depends on how large the fraction is.
Huh, I’m easily distracted. What I meant to say was I think we are all very similar and then I got caught up in semantics. And I meant to relate it to stories, poetry, playing with language to try and squeeze an extra gram of meaning out of it. I never wrote a thing I hadn’t already thought, I mean the mechanics of writing to me were like I imagine the mechanics of painting are; you see the subject in it’s entirety, have an emotional or intellectual reaction and try damn hard to capture the fleeting ghost, a glimpse at the human experience as seen by you or me, a mere fraction of a degree of separation from one another. It’s what attracts us to the arts. Sometimes the saddest most isolated piece speaks to us and contrary to the obvious context we feel a little better, walk a little straighter, not because suffering lifts us up, but we feel connected, less unique, more a part of this shared history. Or, one fraction the other way, and a wave of suicide ideation splashes on our banks.

No, this isn’t a cry for help, it’s me avoiding a point, Ideation. According to the OED, ideation means the formation of ideas or concepts. I’ve never heard it used or used it myself without the word suicide as it’s precursor. I could make a concerted effort to use it in other ways in regular conversation, but I can’t imagine that anyone I was conversing with wouldn’t ask “Ideation? What’s up with that? You trying to win a bet or something?” Ideation is the closest single word to what I mean about stories and poetry and even letters and emails and on some occasions journal entries, though, my first few years doing online journaling and my few decades of analog journaling, I didn’t write entries; I wrote stories and poetry that occasionally overlapped with empirical events.

Ideas and concepts formed, and though maybe only 30 percent of them were written down (not the top thirty percent, a bell curve of thirty percent, impossible to compare to the seventy that weren’t written down) they formed, and formed, and formed. Again, on the healthy level, on the fraction of a degree of separation level, I believe something very similar happens to you. It’s slowed down for me. I keep a journal here because I am hopeful that ideation will ramp back up, though, if pressed, I couldn’t give you a reason why. The process isn’t pleasant, in fact, a breakthrough piece is downright painful, and, not to very long ago, not letting that thirty percent out was painful too. Again, not a cry for help, most forward progress any of make, physically, intellectually, emotionally or spiritually hurt. That’s really what the parable of Adam and Eve is about; once you are aware your entire world-view changes. It took first the invention of competitive torture and later the invention of trailers and trailer parks to take a perfectly good round peg of a parable and shove it into a literal square hole.

I don’t really care if I ever write a single story again, but I really miss ideation. Mechanically I have my moments, but overall I think my writing is adequate and when I proof read it’s adequate with extra points for neatness. I’ve had months when I couldn’t write for a shit, and long periods where I could write for a shit, but neither writing nor shitting was the personal payoff; it was the ideation, the ability to look at the world through a kaleidoscope. So, I’m hopeful that like a writing/shitting dry spell that my ideation is on vacation, maybe camped outside the army base at the foot of Mt McKinley sketching wildflowers, birds and the poor bastards minding the gate. Those poor bastards? .314 degrees of separation. You can hear the ideation screaming through a thousand tiny cuts on their skin, see the flames, the brilliance, the fleeting force, invincible, inevitable, indelible; ideation.