Urban Dictionary defines “mental constipation” as the “inability to articulate one’s thoughts or ideas.” As the result of an evening in the company of Jacques Derrida, I would like to introduce the concept of “reverse mental constipation.” This occurs when one is attempti
ng to absorb knowledge from a very dense text. One pushes and strains and makes grotesque faces, and yet after long periods of intense and exhausting effort only a few pathetic nuggets of knowledge have passed in to the mind. (This in, of course, is what makes it reverse constipation. Conventional constipation is naturally engaged in the effort to pass said pathetic nuggets out…as it were. The direction of this passage is irrelevant, however, in light of the striking similarity between the frustration and discomfort of such fruitless effort.)
What is needed here is some form of reverse mental prune juice–a quick fix to ease and expedite the process of knowledge intrusion (a word here defined not as “a hostile entrance” but rather by its difference–or differance?– from extrusion). Or, to shift the metaphor from excretion to digestion, Derrida and Co. ought to have imbued their texts with ample quantities of easily digestible mind-fiber to make the processing of their ideas a little easier on the mind. As it is, digesting Derrida is like digesting a super-sized bucket of deep-fried spicy chicken wings with a side of curly fries: tough on the innards.
In this case, it seems that gastrointestinal processing and knowledge processing are similar but opposite proceedings: food goes in easy and comes out hard, knowledge goes in hard and comes out shockingly easy, and both wreak havoc in between. And that, folks, is your crass scatological/academic metaphor of the day.
I guess I’m really into metaphors and analogies and the like lately, so here’s another. I was driving home last night in a blinding rainstorm. It was an all-out, hydroplaning, windshield wiper spasming visibility nightmare on I94, and I was consequently feeling harried and a bit afraid. Every so often, though, the freeway would run under an overpass where streets and other highways blocked the rain for fractions of a second. In those brief periods, the thwapping of the rain on my windshield was cut off to reveal the underlying silence, and the fog of splashing water was wiped away leaving my vision suddenly perfectly clear. My wheels rolled smoothly rather than skidding and spraying on the inches of standing water that seemed to cover the road beyond the overpass and I could see where I was headed and proceed, for a moment, confidently in that direction.
d trimming on both sides; it was a big job indeed. As the woman began to work, she noticed countless tiny toads hopping about in the long grass near the base of the fence. They were slow-moving and often hopped in circles– if she had waited for them all to move out of the way before trimming, the task would never be completed. She didn’t want to harm any of them, but they were so tiny and numerous and stupid and she had to get her work done. She winced each time she saw a squishy little body eviscerated under her thrumming weed whip, but the work progressed smoothly and, ultimately, would be completed in good time.
riends are like toilets; you bring them your crap, and they make it disappear. Casual friends are more like outhouses; you can still bring them your crap and get some relief, but they don’t necessarily eliminate the unpleasant fumes of the situation. Shrinks are like those dumb public pay-toilets in England; you can bring them your crap and they make it disappear, but only for a fee (and you know everyone else is bringing their crap there too).
PocketGarden 