[writing] the incisors and the grinders

Samuel Johnson wrote, on April 6th, 1776:

No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.

Maybe, Samuel J but this raises the spectre of the hack, Senancour's 1804 Obermann, Willy Loman, to shamelessly mix metaphors, the writer who writes because he is into writing itself, has visions of the poet in the garrett or else puts out a piece, just to keep the bread on the table.

Walter Bagehot wrote, in 1858:

Writers, like teeth, are divided into incisors and grinders.

To be a grinder seems, in my mind, to be a denial of the purpose of existence, a shaming epitaph to one's talent or lack of it. Like Roald Dahl, I'm terrified of mediocrity, of boring the reader and even at university, I've dropped, over the years, the lessons which don't go down well and retained those which were "winners".

I just cannot wrap the mind round the concept of Keats, from 1819:

All clean and comfortable, I sit down to write.

... although, to be fair, he was referring to a letter he was beginning at the time and he had already written, in 1818:

If poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree, it had better not come at all.

Upfront I claim no literary talent and these words are of the process only, not the end result. However, I just cannot sit down, "all clean and comfortable" to write. I can't do it. It's more a case of waking up at 3 a.m. with thoughts storming through the brain and having to switch on the Mac [it goes to bed with me - truly], of waiting impatiently and then the fingers just take over and I have absolutely no idea where they're going to take me.

It's not even me - it's just something there and characters fly in, fly out, drop by, return and the thing just has to fly ever onward, up hill, down dale, until it stops. When it does, switching off is the only solution until the next time it happens. Usually I crash back to sleep and that's that.

This isn't literature, it's - well, I don't know what it is. Insanity?

So the result is raw, dotted with errors and then, one day, when a fine young chap quietly begins painstaking proof reading and all his suggestions have talent in themselves and when one stops to think of what he''s attempting in his own creativity and the literary persona he himself is and why the hell he is spending time on me, then the jaw drops and one wonders about life.

He makes constant corrections and all are justified, he suggests I develop the character of Konstantine the Cypriot more, he's glad the plot is finally opening up and so on. Can you understand how that puts you on edge, makes you go back and reexamine, rework, enhance, make smoother. It's a heady experience and to know there is a taskmaster on your tale* is a wonderful thing.

Surely these days now are what life is about. This is the wine you sup, the days spent productively. You have to forever feel, hurt, jump for joy, bask in the passion and then crash to darkest oblivion. And always the brute existence beckons, it's always just there behind you, wishing you to rest on your laurels and sink back to it, like quicksand, to become, once again, just another automaton.

Aaaagh, it must never be. Your talent or lack of it is a separate issue but the process itself is the thing and the day you stop is the day you die as homo sapiens.

Sorry, sorry - I've now taken my tablets and am once more feeling a trifle more "usual". Thus, I sit me down to write:

"Gordon Brown today harvested some organs ..."

* intended

[slough of despond] let's extricate ourselves

There is no doubt that interraction is the thing and over the weekend, I just wasn't interacting. You see, I had the chance of proof-reading for my books and had to work to keep ahead of this and have the next chapter ready. Plus I had professional proof reading to do too [less interesting]. Still have now.

Thus I didn't visit and thus my own visits dropped. Even the reliable googling dropped. Not disastrously but we do seem to be in a slough of despond just now, many of us. Andrew Allison wrote:

Yesterday I wasn't feeling at my best. When you look at how many hits you are getting on your blog and things aren't going as well as you would like, there is a tendency for despondency. I would like to thank those who have left comments encouraging me to continue. Dave wrote a comment that he reads the blog through my RSS feed every day and of course that doesn't come on to my site statistics. I don't know why I didn't realise this sooner as I read many blogs by this method too.

My thought is that the thing is temporary, the winter weather has a lot to do with it, we're all pretty busy just now and no need for overreaction on this. Keep the blog ticking over and though it is done more slowly, keep visiting. All will be well.

If you do happen to find yourself in the blogging quicksand, here is some advice. And one last thing - could you spare a minute and pop over to Andrew and cheer him up a bit on this cold, grey Monday?

[escalation] any pretext will do

Everyone knows about Swift's big-enders/little-enders controversy leading to the Lilliputian war against Blefuscu, a lengthy conflict that arose between the big-enders and little-enders (depending upon which side of a boiled egg one must crack in order to eat it).

Here's another from the vaults:

David Pacifico was a Portuguese Jew born at Gibraltar but in Athens in 1849 as the Portuguese consul. His house was burned down by the mob during some religious commotion n he promptly claimed from the Greek government £26,618 compensation, which, of course, they had no intention of paying. However, he was on a British passport so Palmerston sent the Mediterranean Fleet in.

The French Ambassador then got into the act and France and Britain then fell out and the French Ambassador to Queen Victoria was recalled. The Lords censured Palmerston but in the Commons, he made that speech about a British passport protecting its holder anywhere in the world. Pacifico ended up with £5000 for his troubles.

Makes one wonder about the human race.

[lost and found] tale of two couples

Lost

British actor and comedian John Cleese has split from his third wife after 19 years together. An unnamed friend of the couple reportedly revealed that they had decided that their relationship was over but no one else was involved.

His American-born wife, Alyce Faye Eichelberger Cleese, is a psychotherapist and renowned for her work with children. Their decision to separate came after the actor became "melancholy" in recent months after the deaths of several close friends, the newspaper said.

Found

When Anna Kozlov saw the elderly man clambering out of a car in her home village of Borovlyanka in Siberia, she stopped dead in her tracks, convinced that her eyes were playing tricks. There, in front of her, was Boris, the man she had fallen in love with and married 60 years earlier.

The last time she had seen him was three days after their wedding, when she kissed him goodbye and sent him off to rejoin his Red Army unit. By the time he returned, Anna was gone, consigned by Stalin's purges to internal exile in Siberia with the rest of her family as an enemy of the people.

They left no forwarding address. Frantic, Boris tried everything he could to find his young bride, but it was no good — she was gone.

Anna's mother resolved that the girl should remarry. She told her that Boris had remarried. "She said he had forgotten about me — that's why no letters came.

But one day I got back home from work at a timber plant and my mum had burned all his earlier letters, poems and pictures, including our wedding photographs."

Life's too short for this sort of human waste.

[banks] sell debt or lose bonuses

The Melbourne Herald Sun has seen this:

Tellers at one major bank must offer customers new services, including loans and higher credit card limits, once every five hours. If they fail to meet the target they miss out on performance bonuses of 2-6 per cent.

Staff at another major bank have to make seven referrals a week or miss out on bonuses of 2.5 per cent. Workers who fail to meet targets can cause whole branches to miss out.

Lending staff at a third bank must complete $7 million worth of loans a quarter or lose about $12,000 in bonuses a year.

Per employee, the figures are not excessive and the bank is not exactly ordering staff to do this but still - it doesn't take much thought to realize which employees would be smiled on and who would not. Interesting also that the media is running a story like this now which they would not have some years back.

Over and over this blog says - get out of debt, get rid of your cards, live within your means, even if that entails severe lifestyle changes.

Last Minute Musings

Thanks for this last minute message, Matt and for all your posts here. All the best with your sojourn - learn and enjoy.

I spent an hour and a half loading photos on to this portable photo album thing. I unplugged it from my computer after clicking exit. All photos were erased. Anger does not describe what I'm feeling right now.

I'll be out of the country for six months. Even though I plan on being blissfully ignorant of who is selected for each party as a candidate, (to all Americans reading this) remember what I said the other day about lies.

So, if you all couldn't guess where I was going from the video in that post, I'll give you the answer: Spain.

Lastly, check these three paintings out from a friend of mine. She has true talent. Do note she is painter and therefore owner, propietor, and distributor. All rights are reserved by her.








This last one reminds me of the opening credits from Perdo Almodovar's film Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown). Unfortunately, I couldn't find an image of the opening credits to make the comparison but trust me. So, why did I put them up? This is NourishingObscurity, right?

Be sure to go to her blog (linked above) and tell her what you think of them. Alright, that's all guys! If nothing else, I'll see you when I get back!