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 |   A tentative blog to test the temperature. |
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Ten years ago I was writing several blogs on various subjects - F1 motor racing, Music, Classic Cars, Great Romances and, most crushingly, a personal journal that included my thoughts on America, memories of England and Africa, opinion, humour, writing and anything else that occurred. It all became too much (I was attempting to update the journal every day) and I collapsed, exhausted and thoroughly disillusioned in the end. So this blog is indeed a Toe in the Water, a place to document my thoughts in and on WdC but with a determination not to get sucked into the blog whirlpool ever again. Here's hoping.     |
| On Beholding Common sense is in the eye of the beholder. There is a difference between a beholder and the beholder. Find one witness and you have a beholder. But we are all participants in the beholder. |
| Epiphanee, Epiphanah Every now and then I get realisations that are so vast and overwhelming that they drive everything else from my mind. Take this morning for instance. Having to find something to review, so that I can keep the unbroken string of 7-day badges going, I turned away from my usual hunting ground, Read & Review. Why not go to Anniversary Reviews and get extra recognition for the thing, I reasoned. So I did. I turned to their list of anniversaries for this month and began the hunt. There are plenty of times in the past that I’ve done this and not been struck by the sudden insight that was waiting for me today. Which is why it’s a bit weird that it happened now instead of some other time. I was less than halfway down the list when the huge number of names really hit me. There are literally hundreds of them. But it wasn’t just the number of names that was getting to me. These were just those who had joined WDC in the month of March, after all. Consider all the other months in which people had flocked to sign up and the number begins to stretch into the distance. So many people, so many people. And all wanting to be writers. But it wasn’t even this that gave me pause. There are all the other writer sites to think about too. WDC hasn’t captured them all, no doubt. So the number is actually way beyond this tip of the iceberg I was looking at this morning. There were millions of them. And all wannabe writers. But it wasn’t even this vast revelation that did it. That happened when I took that last little step into the unknown, that hesitant question that opens the vast universe to view and boggles the mind with its answer. It was all caused by the tiny question I asked myself. If all these people want to be writers, is there anyone left to read them? Word Count: 332 |
| cNotes and Things You know, cNotes have this little box for any response you might want to write. And it's labelled "Respond to this cNote," in case you haven't noticed. Which then makes me wonder if it actually finds an anonymous sender. Otherwise, there doesn't seem to be a way to express gratitude for the thought, apart from a sort of shotgun blast in the Newsfeed, on the chance that it might reach its target. Personally, I hope that these responses do find their way through the fog of anonymity to the sender, since they do assuage the need to express gratitude. It's probably better not to tell me, if you know that they don't. Allow me this little, satisfying illusion, at least. |
| Today! All times are modern times. To the people in 'em. |
| Oops 3 A few days ago, I wrote myself into a corner. I was thinking about the prompt for this month’s contest at StAG Firebox and had an interesting idea for it. A quick check on the rules and I was off and writing. In pretty short order, I had just over 500 words and things were going well. I took a break and, of course, that was the end of work for the day. The next day I attacked the thing with renewed energy. I was really enjoying this one - I liked the basic idea, it was set in a time that I enjoy writing for, and everything was flowing pretty easily. I passed the thousand word mark and figured I could easily finish it within the 2,000 limit. And then I decided I’d better check the requirements again. One thing I’ve learned in my life is never to ignore these sudden impulses to check on things you think have been properly nailed down. The maximum word count given was 1,000. I knew immediately where my confusion had come from. The What a Character Official Contest this month has a 2,000 word limit and I also have an idea what to write for that. Somehow I had mixed up the two maxima (sorry, just had to get in the Latin plural). The terrible point was that I’d already exceeded the StAG limit, and I was only halfway through the story. If you hate rewriting as much as I do, you will understand my dismay. I had to take the rest of the day off in disgust. Overnight I remembered that, at the point where I’d first paused writing, I was still aiming at the correct word limit - 1,000. So, at that moment, I must have been happy that I could tell the whole story within the set boundary. I went back to the manuscript the next day. copied the first 500 words or so into a new document and finished the tale as I had originally intended to. And I was quite happy with it. Wrapped it up appropriately, added a colourful bow, and sent it off to StAG. Now, of course, I have the uncompleted longer story waiting for a decision on its future. I was intending for it to have a much fuller and richer ending than the short version, and it has been going well in that direction. So I’d like to finish it. The only problem is that I hate rewrites and feel pure horror of the idea of writing a new beginning to it, as well as an ending. I am sorely tempted to take up the story where I left off and just continue. Which would leave me with a story that has an identical beginning to the shorter one (which it will have to sit right next to in my portfolio). How many people are going to begin to read it, realise that it seems exactly like the other one, and stop reading as a result? And do I care? I suppose I do, a little bit. But I also think that the best policy is honesty. I should write a note explaining that it’s just a longer version of the short story and should be read only if the reader wants a deeper understanding of the end. So that’s what I intend to do. While I’m finishing off the long version (hopefully tomorrow), you could take a look at the short one if you’re interested.
Word count: 586. |
| Enough, Already I confess to becoming tired at times of our constant whining about the terrible things we’ve done to the earth. Yes, we’ve paved Paradise and put up a parking lot, shifted mountains in our hunt for necessary minerals, erected monstrous conglomerations of little-box living quarters for our millions to live in. And we’re not the first to notice and wish that things could remain as they never were - an Eden where the lion lies down with the lamb in meadows of eternal green. There is no particular virtue in joining our moans to all the others that have gone before; there is no dramatic new insight in complaining without an eye to the good things we’ve done as well. The plain fact is that all the evidence points to the fact that every cataclysmic and apocalyptic world-ending drama that is dreamed up by each generation in its turn is defeated by our own equally stunning inventiveness and ingenuity. Where now is the overpopulation predicted in the sixties? Replaced by a world where everyone is better off and has more to eat than ever before. Where is the new ice age that the seventies so loudly proclaimed to be upon us at any moment? Oh, terribly sorry - we seem to have lost that one in all the fuss about global warming. Never mind, I’m sure we can persuade some errant passing meteor to change course and collide with the earth sometime soon. By all predictions, we should have run out of oil years ago. Silver too (bet you don’t remember that one). All overcome and sent packing, every one of them. And, as long as we don’t panic, retain a sense of perspective, and are reasonably careful about how we proceed, there is absolutely no reason why this earth shouldn’t last until, well, the end of the world. Whining doesn’t help a bit. Word coin: 313 |
| An Ancestral Herring My father used to repeat this riddle that he’d learned as a kid: If a herring and a half cost three ha’pence, how much does a herring cost? Seeing that not only the penny has long disappeared from British currency, and the ha’pence (halfpenny piece) even longer, one can get an idea of just how old the question is. The question is almost meaningless now, and I know from experience that asking it merely invokes history lessons on the intricacies of extinct British coin systems. Which is a pity, since it’s actually quite a clever and amusing little jest. It depends, you see, upon the deliberate confusion induced by saying thee ha’pence, rather than one-and-a-half pennies. That’s what it is, after all. And the moment we see that is the instant we realise how simple the problem is. Obviously, a herring costs a penny (another indicator of the great age of the riddle). The story does offer evidence of the fact that I carry around both my own history but also that of my parents’ time. In this way my memory includes the lore (and, I hope, the wisdom) of over a century of experience and learning. It’s really no wonder that I often feel like a dinosaur that never evolved into a bird. Word count: 214 |
| Gloria Lilli puts up this quote for Question of the Day today: "Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning." ~ Gloria Steinem, activist Then she asks what our plans are for the day. And that reminds me of something I was thinking about as a possible post for the blog - a couple of days ago. It was all about this verse from the Good Book: “In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people; your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.” ~ Acts 2:17 I can testify to that last mention of dreams - I do dream dreams now that I’m old and sometimes I even remember them. But, according to Gloria Steinem, that’s really planning. Now, I have never, do not now, and sincerely hope never to plan, especially when talking about my future. Perhaps that’s why I don’t get excited about possibilities, although I would put it down to my training as a Brit. We don’t get excited about anything. But the point is that either Gloria is wrong and dreaming is not planning (personally, I’d go with this interpretation), or I am wrong and my planning is done in my sleep. And this last might explain why my life has been largely a matter of being blown by the prevailing wind on courses that I have no memory of choosing. Which merely seems to prove that unconscious planning is so unreliable that it might as well be called anything but planning. So speak for yourself, Gloria, and I’ll go my happily unplanned and unpredictable way. But at least I got a blog post out of the quote. Word count: 297 |
| Gunter Grass In my Portfolio Biography, I have stated that, in my opinion, Gunter Grass is the best writer of the 20th Century. He was German and of that generation whose childhood was engulfed by the Second World War. As such, the postwar guilt that (understandably) infects that generation is the driving force behind his writing (his most famous work, The Tin Drum, is set in the war period). Before you get the idea that I can understand the German language well enough to have read the originals of his books, I have to confess that I only know the works through the translations published in English. Which means that the person who I am really impressed with is his translator, a person whose name I do not know. In his hands, the books are masterworks of fluency, understanding and insight. And I’m not the only one to have realised that the translator deserves kudos; I have read several articles that comment on that fact. This means that I have to guess at the quality of Grass’ writing. In all probability, his books are even better than the translations, in which case I am truly thunderstruck at his ability. But there is a possibility that it’s the translator whose genius is such that he has made a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. Unlikely, but to be borne in mind even so. Anyway, I leave the line in my bio because it’s true that the English translations are such a high literary achievement. There’s not room enough allowed for me to add this proviso about the originals, so this little note will have to suffice. Have a read of The Tin Drum if you get the chance. Word count: 287 |
| A Little About Portal This morning I decided that I should write a post for the blog. This happens occasionally and is invariably followed by the thought, Yes, but what? All the posts about music caught my eye and I regretted not having been involved in that whole Soundtrack of Your Life thingy. But, no use crying over spilt milk, and there’s always next year. And, of course, that’s no reason not to write about music. Which reminded me that I intended to dig into that tune that Anni Pon posted about a while back - you know, the Still Alive song by Portal. Today seemed as good a time as any to do just that. It’s kinda weird. Portal turns out not to be a group but is rather, I think, a computer game based on a science fiction story about… And there’s the rub. I found a recording that attempts to explain the story but it was obviously not up to squeezing enough information into the short time allowed to it. I didn’t learn much. But I did find a video with three songs, including Still Alive. The others are Want You Gone and Turret Song. And they share the strange and futuristic feel of Still Alive. Not everyone will like this odd kind of music but it fascinates me and, on the chance that there might be others out there with similar unlikely tastes to mine, I decided to share the video on the blog. Just a quick word to prepare you (if you decide to listen). The music is simple but somehow compelling, the voice mechanical but magnetic. And each song, although clearly of the same type as the others, has something about it that makes it stand out. The bass in Still Alive, for instance, is a huge part of its appeal. For Want You Gone, think drums, and, for Turret Song, it’s all about a cathedral choir. I can’t help it - I’m a sucker for this king of thing. Word count: 330 |
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