good advice.

The best advice I think I have ever received, which I am not passing to you as advice, but rather as a story; was this: never take advice from anyone who gives it to you without being asked first, in fact, generally avoid people who are prone to that kind of behavior. People like that have something they are trying to prove; not to you, but only to themselves. This was also not offered to me as advice, but only as the story that I am now relaying to you. I am only left to wonder how far in the past it was that one clever being asked another, "What should I do if I am offered advice?"

the good king.

this piece is undergoing revision for Jeopardy.

the word "will"

If the reader is willing to put up with a bit of nonsense and narcissism, then I, William Beyer, shall write an essay that I hope you shall find at least somewhat interesting. Where to begin? Perhaps with a nickname since to a few, I am known as Will. As a derivative of my actual name, it’s about as simple as it gets, still, I cannot imagine any other nicknames share spelling with such a complex word. The Oxford English Dictionary turns it up as a noun verb and adverb in its simplest form, but also turns up as an adjective in the form of willed, as in, ill-willed. By far its most common form is as an auxiliary verb to describe an action that is going to take place in the future. Where is it in the text? Where isn’t it in any text? The word will appears four times on page 190 (chosen at random) of Kafka’s short stories. It’s the kind of word you use a hundred times a day, and by this repetition it is often taken for granted. In this form, will is also completely interchangeable with shall. These uses of the word are indeed function over form, serving their purposes admirably, but doing little else to add to the collective that they must be a part of.
Will is also a thing that one possesses, yet it is an odd force, difficult to define. Will can be described in one sense as what one wants. It can also be something that tells who gets what when you die, as in “last will and testament”, your final wishes. The willingness to do something relates not to ability, but to desirability. I could go on, but I’m not willing to do so. Perhaps most intriguing of all however, is the concept of willpower. I’ve never been quite sure what it is. On one hand, it seems to be the ability to resist or persist at something for an amount of time; a stubbornness quotient. Willpower also often appears as a stat in many of my favorite role playing games, usually related in some way to spell power. What is it then? How does one gain strength of will, even in the real world? Willpower can almost be made out to be a spiritual thing, how long and how far you’ll go to stand up in what you believe in might be a measure of willpower. Children deliberately disobey their parents to show willpower, perhaps even to explore its depths. Willpower is admitting when you are wrong, and holding out when you are right.
Now, if I may, I’d like to take a look at will in Kafka’s short story “In the Penal Colony” where the explorer is trying to remove the officer’s body from the apparatus. “And here, almost against his will, he had to look at the face of the corpse.” I find the notion of “almost against his will” very interesting; what does that mean? It is something that he needs to do, but doing so is not entirely against his will. Would he have looked even if he didn’t need to? I would say that it is true that our wants, our will, often get the better of us. This man is an explorer; his desires are to see the world and to see what few others have seen. It is entirely possible that he knows quite well the depths of his own willpower. How the rest of us come to know our own limits, is a bit of a mystery.
Semantic satiation is the notion that repeating a word over and over again causes it to lose all meaning and I think this notion has made this paper difficult. Is my will weakened or strengthened by continual use? I feel that here is a certain risk involved in an essay like this; that I might, to my detriment, avoid using the word in the next few days. I feel that have at least partially exhausted it, and so exhausted my will to write, hopefully that was the in some part the goal of the assignment.

A bit of nothing, an interruption for your consideration.

If you would be so kind, consider this: "novels make readers lazy, stupid, dissolute, insane, insubordinate: exactly like films two centuries later" Franco Moretti on the triumph of the novel in Graphs, Maps, Trees. I like the idea that genres are architectural styles for buildings of literature. Styles that fall in and out of favor in the public eye, some are modest and practical, and others are elaborate and flashy. Of course, the kind you like best will mostly depend on your own personal taste. Styles that will be imitated recreated and improved on in the future by any aficionado with the means and desire to do so.

Hey kids, want to learn how to do things with words? Guess what, you just did. You are doing things with words right now every time you use them. So I guess that’s pretty cool, good thing to take home to mom and dad and put up on the fridge. Are children taught how much of an impact what they say can be? How does one learn to be sensitive with words when need be, and then to be completely free with them whenever you can be? I don’t really know. I have always thought that the performative was a little hokey; we are after all living in a time when so much of what we do is accompanied by words. Our words and our actions have become so tangled is there really anything that we can do only accomplish with words? Or only with actions? Even the most mundane conversation will have gestures associated with it.

I think I am going to describe a reoccurring dream. I understand that this is what mundane people do to make their lives seem more interesting. As if to say “Hey, I know that interesting things don’t happen to me, nor do I cause them, but at least I can make them up in my head.” Whatever. If you don’t care about the dream, skip the next paragraph, if you don’t care about the dream or what I think it means skip the next two paragraphs. Thanks.

A reoccurring dream: I am in high school again, in a transition between classes. After leaving whatever class I am now finished with, I realize that I do not know where my next class is. Not only am I unaware of its location, but I also quickly realize I have not yet even narrowed down the possibilities of which room the class might be in. Apparently, I have no references at my disposal either. Faces in the hall way are unrecognizable, and I seem to be on my own. In short order however, I am able to narrow it down to two possibilities. I begin to go in the general direction that I believe is most likely. My first guess is always wrong. Now not only have I wasted time, but I have also managed to lead myself in completely the wrong direction from where I now know the class must be. This leg of the journey is always inexplicably difficult. My simple, rather small high school has somehow become a nasty labyrinth with twisting folding paths in some places, or great masses of slow moving people in other places. Finally after what feels like miles, I most recently found myself in a cluttered storage room in the school’s basement. The door to the class is on the other side of the room, but is set a good ten feet above the ground. At this point it usually occurs to me that something does not want me to get to class. Why? I can’t explain it. Just as I reach the door, it is thrown open, and water and screams come pouring out. I am drowning. This is when I wake up. The water was a new feature, but the dream always ends in a similar fashion. I am never successful.

What does any of it mean? I don’t know but I am, time and again, incredibly frustrated by this dream. Two reasons: one my first guess is ALWAYS wrong. It’s as if I am not learning anything, and still making the same damn mistakes; showing up to the wrong place at the wrong time. The other reason is that this dream makes my current life feel temporary. As if I’m going to wake up back in Spokane (which is always where I feel like I am momentarily after waking up from this dream) and have to go back to fucking high school. I honestly think that I would be a lot more comfortable with this dream if it would just switch its backdrop to Western. Not that high school was that bad, but I am certainly all for putting it all behind me.

I thought I had something (else?) to say with this piece but now I’ve lost it. Right now, I’m just waiting for the karma needle to dip negative. The straight upward trend makes me nervous somehow. Although the idea of it being better by having a sort of up and down trend also seems completely ridiculous. The part of me that is writing this is waiting for a different part of me to change, to change all of me. It’s kind of an odd feeling.