train of thought Traditional Cache
-
Difficulty:
-
-
Terrain:
-
Size: 
(regular)
Please note Use of geocaching.com services is subject to the terms and conditions
in our disclaimer.
After you find this cache, maybe you will sit and write something lengthier than your screenname and date. I hope you do. Or maybe you will rush off like the March Hare. Busy busy. Here's to the ones who take that time to sit still. Those who work on a story as reader or writer. Start to finish, all the way down the line.
You will have a hard time getting through this summary and description. The coordinates may jump a little. This cache is for those in no hurry.
The cache is chained. I advise taking the logbook inside some local establishment and writing your log there. You're going to look silly squatting there like that. Veritable Muggle prey.
Some say books are disappearing. Perhaps. The words are diminishing, but that's not entirely true. The words are there, but we lack the breath to put them together. To make connections. We allow interruptions. They connect if you listen.
Listen. We are moving back to pictures and symbols. We are having a harder and harder time following keeping the machine chugging down the track. Finding the quiet. What shame. No wonder meditation is so difficult. We are unlearning patience. We are ever more connected, but to a device. Who said the problems of man stem from his inability to sit still in a quiet room?
In the reading of a book is a slow, patient practice. Thankfully, I learned young. It was Stephen King who encouraged me how to go one line at a time when I was 12. Savor things, find a quiet space, wait for it. It's not about the ending. It's about the ride. Thank you, Steve. I remember how that story began - "The most important things are the hardest things to say". The story involved 4 boys in the 1950's following a train track to a body.
After King I somehow made it to William Goldman to Orwell to Chekhov and a hundred other men I wish I could have somehow thanked before they bowed out. But though they are not here, through books I met them.
Reading is the closest thing to time travel we will ever have. And what could be more intimate? You and the author are sharing something which cannot take place without writer AND reader. It is a collaboration out of time and space. It takes your mind to understand theirs. It is private. Mark Zuckerberg cannot reach the two of you there.
And writing comes from a similar place. In fact, I wrote Mr. King himself at 14 (and he wrote back). I sat down and thought, what do I need to say?
Like meditation. Writing is a slow waking as you sit there in front of a blank page. There is a little anxiety but then - that patience begins. Both reading and writing are practices in patience. Well worth it. Reading itself is nothing special. It's a decoding. The powers that be want us to read just enough to follow road signs and flock to the word SALE. But they'd rather un buy more and think less - so the complicated lines of thought, the bigger stories are becoming a challenge. If you write a book these days, you'd best make it something the studios can make into a movie.
Many are already mourning the disappearance of narrative. Obsessed with the present, the latest tweet, the ever-threading and unrelateed items of the feed, we are unable to get from point A to point B. Life becomes a series of derailings. There is always an interruption of focus. The interruption comes from the smartphone, the ringtone, the pop-up, but - as has been studied in high school students and the "phantom ring" phenomenon - the interruption is now built into us. In The Shallows, Nicholas Carr studies the neuroplasticity of the brain and makes some surprising discoveries. After reading and writing for years the author was unable sit still long enough to get out a paragraph or get through a page. The once peaceful activities now made him feel restless. He had changed from the page to the blog. And he had rewired his system in 10 years writing online.
In the book Present Shock, Douglas Rushkoff studies "narrative collapse". Man's means of communiacting - the telling of the story - is becoming trivialized and atomized. Like crossword puzzle answers, one does not lead to the next. The words are decontextualized and without meaning. We move from making sense of things to taking things apart. Like the methhead working on that motorcycle in the yard. He will never get to experience the whole of riding the bike. But he will take it apart bit by bit by bit.
The continuous present makes it almost impossible to follow a train of thought. It's a train in vain
But where did you come from and where are you going? You might not see it but you are on a track and there is a good story there.
Please don't bump your head. This thing is old and rusty.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Va gur oryyl bs gur ornfg