Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
I best start with the cut ‘n paste from the ‘hop hostinae, Kenya and Kristi, thinkin I might not be explaining the ‘theme’ of this week’s FTSF blog post.
Hi all! We’re on tomorrow night (Thursday, March 29) at 10pm eastern where you can share anything previously written! Either re-publish something you’d like more eyes on, or re-use all or most of a previous blog post. Easy, right?
Just as a reminder – some websites may turn comments off if they’re older so be sure to turn them back on if need be (Kenya thought of this – it never would have occurred to me).
The linkup will remain live through Sunday evening and we hope to see… you there!
Link up with Kenya G. Johnson at Sporadically Yours: https://www.kenyagjohnson.com or with me (Kristi Campbell) at Finding Ninee: http://www.findingninee.com/
(By the way, it was only after I read some of the other FTSF posts did I understand the theme. Not sure how I lost my grip on a fairly simple concept, but this serves as an example of the relentlessly benign relationship that I’ve enjoyed since the day I stepped through my computer screen. The people I’ve been fortunate enough to come to know (and often consider friends) have all been like that, you know, the reminder that your fly is open (or slip is showing*) that is done so that not only are you immediately informed (and therefore can make a quick correction) but it is done in a way that only you (and your benefactor) are aware of.)
That was a bit of long side trip to what stands to be a totally insufficient introduction to my choice of Throwback Post.
In any event, as indicated, this post is from the first year of the Wakefield Doctrine blog and for reasons I don’t quite** understand, I always think fondly of it.
From December 27, 2009
oh man, what is it now?
Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine. Sorry to dissappoint, but the Interview with the roger(Progenitor) is not complete and as such is nowhere near ready to Post. Sunday is a time when I try to get something/anything new in but was drawing a major blank until the name James Joyce flashed against my 3am brain and so we are going to walk to amateur experimental-writing land this morning. And by the way there is something weird about trying to write like this and yes I will tell you something you do not in fact know but the loss or surrender of most punctuation is really hard on the typing. Thank god for the occaisional period although I don’t know how many of them I have left but for some reason doing this Post the way I am I am mis-spelling alomst every third word I promise that I will spellcheck this thing and not put you throught that ordeal or misspelling everything in the name of an art for which I have no techniques be warned though I did look up EE Cummings before I started and at the first opportunity I know I will jam a reference to his stuff. My mother used to have an expression that went a little knowledge is a dangerous thing I think this is an example of what she meant although she died in 1979 and could not have imagined this particular form of acting without regard to justification. Although she (my mother) was a clark of the first order so I would bet that she would have no problem accepting the strangeness of this Post. We clarks are good at that we will witness the second coming and not show a reaction. But she was a clark in all the classic forms of expression you must allow for the time/culture she existed in which for my purposes and perception would be the 1950s through the 1970s. But as a clark she was the perfect selfless-to-a-fault mother and just in case there was any doubt about here type (clark, scott or roger) she has a 3rd grade school teacher. Hey no clark there. Anyway not sure how i got off on that tangent. Damd did i just lose capital letters? Oh well what can you do. so i was saying i brushed up on ee cumming because we all had the wednesday in spring 5th grade english class that started on the poetry and who did not like the phrase and the world was puddle wonderful? but the fun for me was that he did not need to use punctuation or even particularly spell things right and he certainly felt free to make up his own words. i never got much into that poetry thing then but like so much i am only now coming to appreciate things that i thought at a previous time i just did not have the time for. and maybe that is part of what this post is saying to me. while it is not uncommon to put things off, i am coming to an understand only now of how there is not a later for things to get done and as i look back i realise how much time i wasted. this is not a negative thought rather for me this realization produces in me the acceptance and will that whatever i might find of interest today i should and must invest all i have to invest in it now, not later. yeah, yeah i know kind of basic, mature adult looking at life shit. bear with me am filling up the page and can get out hopefully without a topic but no, i stayed too long. so i was talking with downspring glenn, who of course is a scott you saw his interview last week and we got on the subject of post writing and what to do when there is no topic. he is just a scott and as such is strongest in the here and now where all those people live but afterall all of us participating in this Doctrine thing are no more a pure form of our type than we are neither so as an evolved scott glenn is able and quite helpful in working on the development of the Doctrine at least as far as this current effort to bring it to the world. did I get off on a tangent? how the fuck could you tell? this stuff is probably harder to write than it is to read at least you can stop at any point an say yeah that was cute that was creative so when is there a point going to be made and maybe i will just check back in on tuesday or so. and btw i have no idea of what the appropriate music is going to be with this odd little post but if the cat smiles it will be what it needs to be. where was i oh yeah, glenn and the discussion of topics for posts. he said hey why don’t you write about the differences between… and then a number of suggestions most sports as a vehicle for comparing clarks, scotts and rogers. i think he suggested baseball, football and golf i said sure that sounds like a good idea and then he moved on to compare the three stooges which he realized we had already done in person i think talking with downspring joanne who i want to thank for her efforts at working on the questionaire which no else is helpin on. damn i wish i still had itlaics. anyway glenns last suggestion was pick a person in the world that you really hate and tell them how much you hate them and why you hate them. good idea. i hate glenn very much much and it is because he is so scottian at times that i don’t understand…ha ha got you going for a second huh? glenn it is strange how presentation changes everything. words are the point but how important is how they are arranged/laid out/presented/fuckin typed? apparently it makes all the difference in the world. so to complete this minor cycle in the overall arch of the post and my spelling is really going downhill, i hoep that this thing does not decide that spelloing does not matter as grammar and everything else seems to not matter. will do my best to hold on to the last shred of coherency almost done. anyway since we always include some new information about the wakefield doctrine in every post. hey do they still do the prizes in boxes of cereal? i still remember the whole digging to the bottom of the box of frosted flakes looking for the prize that was invariably contained in some kind of white paper envelope that was sealed around the edges in a most peculiar way. the lesson? oh yeah hazel used to use that expression the oh yeah thing jeez what a not to be described yet total energy black hole that hole my hazel relationship thing was. even allowing for the first relationship effect which is cheating here because if you bring up a significant life event i don’t think you should try to control it by laying a in-retrospect i certainly understand what i …blah blah blah but it was the focal point of my existance while it was happening and for too many years after it was over. wtf where the hell am i? where are my caps, my parentheses, jeez louise it is a lot easier to get lost in this rather tedious technique than it is to get out. must find paragraph key…i now it is here somewhere none of the keys have letters anymore shit try something hit any k)y ok {? maye hit1234 nah numbers \
Ah! I’m out! Thank you jesus! I am out of that, that, a lot funnier to read than to write, thing. Whew, man I thought that would never end.
Hey, plenty of white space filled in…maybe I can just tie up a few loose thoughts, find some music and put this bad boy in the category: ‘Keep one as Proptype, cancel production run”Damn, what little typing skills I had, seem a bit messed up by this little experiment. Alright loose end tying time, (in no particular order):
there was a person by the name of hazel; my mother was, in fact, a 3rd grade teacher (quite a good one, but she was a clark); hey I gots italics!; golf is a clarklike sport; football is scottian and baseball is the rogerian sport.
Alright. Now for some music….(man! I just ‘previewed’ this Post, jesus christ what a mess! am thinking of putting music first, be weird but that really, totally is a meaningless term at least for today.) Nah…better put it down here, someplace for the Reader to run to:
So…
Will not leave without a Goodnight to our friends in Slovenia…hey guys…
* or whatever is considered a female-istic wardrobe malfunction these days… (yeah, my use of that expression stencils ‘MID TWENTIETH CENTURY’ all over this thing)
** I think I’m beginning to get a sense of what it is about this post that I enjoy/that resonates with me (to be cont’d)
About clarkscottroger
Well Zip A Dee Doo Dah is going to be stuck in my head for a few. Oh boy. LOL! So I was curious, I thought you’d say… Was this writing for a prompt, certain amount of time and then to add a song that goes with? Interesting concept. I wonder if we could do a related stream of consciousness with no prompt and then choose a soundtrack. You wrote something about not having an appreciation for poetry until you were older. I think I’d like to try reading something by William Shakespeare and see if I can have a better appreciation for it now. To date, I can not understand why it was such a big deal and/or necessary to learn.
when I went back (today) to re-read the post from 2009, I realized that it was, in fact, a stream of consciousness post. I was still too new to the ‘sphere back then to realize that… the thing about how I think I might now understand why this post has stayed with me is that I think it represents a point when I felt confident in the way I felt about writing to go ahead and hit ‘Publish’
…no matter how weird it might be lol
That’s pretty cool! I can remember the anxiety of hitting publish – like 10,000 people were going to read it right away.
WOWZA. I feel sorta out of breath even though I could pause in my head without the comments. Somehow, I just didn’t and enjoyed the look into your Clark brain with the stream of thought writing. Also, computer friends are most definitely real friends. Like you said, just because we can’t meet up for coffee doesn’t mean I won’t tell you when your fly is open. I like that you don’t see things put off for later as a waste of time but instead as a reminder to do what you are interested in now rather than putting it off. I like that very much.
I don’t think any of the cereals have prizes any longer but I do fondly remember digging into the bottom of the box to get it! I don’t remember seeing any prizes while looking for ones that Tucker will eat without sugar as the first ingredient. LOL maybe sugar is the prize these days.
PS your fly seems fine but maybe doublecheck because now you’re thinking about it.
I mentioned in my comment to Kenya, I think what makes me like this post the most was that it was the point where I knew I could doing anything that felt right and post it.
Haven’t had cereal in I don’t know how long… used to love that stuff.
I miss the days of not caring too. I really do. Somewhere along the line, I started taking myself too seriously or something. DUMB. Because who cares! But I get it. One of my first blog posts was like 4 sentences long.
yeah… I remember on of those random spontaneous memes from back then; once I noticed that I was getting ‘careful’ I’d start to think, ‘well, don’t do that, everyone will get mad/offended…. for reasons unknown the thought occurred to me, ‘this is the internet! I’ll just get ‘another set of everybody’.
lol it actually helped
What a challenge you gave me this time! Reading this post was a little like trying to reading the handwritten (1887) journal my GG Grandfather wrote. He didn’t use any punctuation and the handwriting was not always legible. There were a lot of pages, but for the sake of those who wanted to read it later, I persevered and typed out his journal. His spelling was pretty good, but some of the terminology was new to me, given the time things happened.
Being a little familiar with ee cummings’ writings, I’d say you did a good job here. I also appreciate how difficult it must have been to purposely misspell words, and stick with what you started. (“it is a lot easier to get lost in this rather tedious technique than to get out of it”)
Loved the reference to the prizes in the bottoms of the cereal boxes, and being the first to find it. Once in a while I was able to get a box of CrackerJacks and always looked forward to the little toys inside which seemed a step above those in the cereal boxes.
lol good thing we don’t have to hand-write posts! My hand-writing has gone way downhill. I want to believe that it is a) lack of practice 2) exacerbated by the improvement in my typing skills. These are not as redundant as they may sound. Sure there is a physical skill to writing legibly and practice is required to maintain whatever level of skill one may possess. But when I try to write something at work, (I keep hand-written notes in my property files) I am taken-aback at how bad (my) writing is… almost scary-bad. But then I noticed that I was trying to write as fast as I was ‘dictating in my head’… and it dawned on me, I just couldn’t keep up and in trying to, end up with a really in-readable bunch of letters and words.
I’m glad you mentioned ee cummings I just went and looked up the poem that the phrase I used was from. What an excellent bunch of words!
[in Just-]
By E. E. Cummings
in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman
whistles far and wee
and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it’s
spring
when the world is puddle-wonderful
the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing
from hop-scotch and jump-rope and
it’s
spring
and
the
goat-footed
balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee
(from the website: Poetry Foundation)
“We clarks are good at that we will witness the second coming and not show a reaction.”
That line caused me to smile largely in 2009 and still does today :D
“…whatever i might find of interest today i should and must invest all i have to invest in it now, not later.”
That line: clarks must realize this, do this, we of the future and “some day” because wtf. Is not the future predicated on the here and now? Duh! lol
Enjoyable recap of the early days and a lovely reminder of the efficacy of the Wakefield Doctrine.
it’s a condition that is amenable to change, provided we remember to step off three feet to the left.
I love excersizes like this. Astream of consciousness that meets, or rather maybe starts, as some sort of self-challenge. For the reader it is a glimpse into your personal writing vs brain self.
For the writer it is often a cathartic delight that leads to one (or maybe two) bright red drops that can be preserved on glass and peered at later, to find the treasure of all the moving cells and parts that can only be seen under the scope, at first, but then you (the writer) can shine a light, or disect further, or just magnify that one drop into something more…
Or you can just leave it. The catharsis alowing you to let it all go.
I think the ee cummings effect made it through.
:)
“…maybe starts, as some sort of self-challenge.”
The first few years of writing this post was amazing, in terms of everything was a challenge, but the part that’s difficult to convey is that, the experience for me was one of being carried along on the energy that came from the idea of taking the Wakefield Doctrine out to ‘the world’. I did things (and continue to do things) that I genuinely believe would not have been possible, were it not this personality theory mission.
so this particular post was (and I hear when I read it) a case of me (as writer) being along for the ride. confident that things would work out for the best.
And, as I’ve commented elsewhere, this post marked a point where I accepted that it was alright to right what I felt as much as it was alright to write what I knew.
Wow. My son happened to look over my shoulder and saw the Zip-A-Dee-Do-Da clip (he can spot anything Disney from a mile away so I’m sure he would have seen it where ever he was). I can’t tell you how many times he’s see this clip from the Disney Sing-a-long videos when he was younger. Now he is searching intently on youtube because, once is never enough.
can’t remember the specifics, but we were very heavily exposed to the Disney music machine, back in the day.
I seriously feel like I could read your mind just by reading what you had written previously. Definitely was a trip directly into your self-conscious here if nothing else. Which by the way, I highly enjoyed. That said now I am singing Zip A Dee Doo Dah and indeed hoping it has been nothing short of a wonderful day for you, my friend! :)
lol ayiiee!
My dates might be a bit off, but you and Cynthia and the crowd at the Bloppy Bloggers were the first bloggers I had the nerve to ‘talk to’. Felt kinda like being the transfer student where most everyone else came up through grade school together, except the miracle of the Doctrine in which I stayed around and didn’t run away…lol