A blurb that explains (possibly in words too many) why this site is called 'oturn'
In Germany (maybe also elsewhere) people buy tin cast sets containing various shapes (bells, hearts, etc). On new year's eve, these are molten in a spoon held over a candle and cast into cold water. The package contains a leaflet providing rather asinine explanations of the resulting shapes, which are supposed to foretell the caster's coming year. Drops that accidentally fall onto a flat surface sometimes form beautiful and fragile shapes. This drop on new year's eve looked like an 'O' and hinted at a spiral, so I thought it a fitting shape for an oturn logo.
oturn as a site name
When I began rescuing content from my old blogs genug.weblogs.com and genug.manilasites.com on which people or fate had suddenly pulled the plug, I was researching domain names hoping to find one that was:
- non-personal: not my name (even though this is a personal site)
- adaptable: not committing me to a particular field or topic
- succinct: short, pronouncable, still available at the time. (While 'oturn' seems simple enough, I usually have to spell it because it is not a lexical term.)
- a seed: a seed of a concept that somehow resonates with how I feel.
Then I remembered having played around with the term 'u-turn' a while ago.
An oturn is a u-turn going full circle
You go round and round a roundabout when you cannot work out from the signposts which exit to take. You stay in the circular flow hoping to be able to figure it out before you finally take any exit, stop on the hard shoulder, and consult a map.
I am not going to explain this to death.
Should this circular motion remind you of Picabia's famous quip that "God made our head round, so that our thinking can change directions", this is not what I intend to convey. I wish to believe that there is a best exit which is just badly signposted. I am confused and admit I am confused. I reject the advice that "If you are writing in order to discover your mind or to try out a new stance" you should "file the note in your desk drawer, not on your website" [10 Tips on Writing the Living Web]. I think it useful to share things even if far from certainty. The web has already plenty of conviction and rather little doubt and self-doubt. (However, some of the things gathered here are more opinionated than I may have led you to expect.)
Going in circles is an opportunity to look closely, repeatedly. You start watching the activity of going in circles to the point that you lose interest in the exit. This is the image of a groove that gets deeper and deeper. This groove is more a side effect of the ersatz activity documented here than the outcome of some Donald-Duck-like performance expressing futility or exasperation.
Recently, I came across a passage in A. E. Poe's late prose poem Eureka which reminded me of the oturn concept (even though he is clearly after something else). I reproduce the passage here:
'He who from the top of Ætna casts his eyes leisurely around, is affected chiefly by the extent and diversity of the scene. Only by a rapid whirling on his heel could he hope to comprehend the panorama in the sublimity of its oneness.' (original emphasis)
Further down, Poe returns to this image:
'(...) we require something like a mental gyration on the heel. We need so rapid a revolution of all things about the central point of sight that, while the minutae vanish altogether, even the more conspicious objects become blended into one.'
