Ten-year-old Ertugrul Osman was present in Lausanne on July 24, 1923, when the treaty which divided up the Ottoman Empire was signed, officially bringing to an end more than six centuries of Turkish rule across three continents.
It was at l'Hôtel Cecil in the city where the victorious Allies handed out ancient territory like chunks of meat, with Osman shunted into a back room as the bargaining took place. At any rate, the boy would have struggled to understand the streams of exchanged French, Japanese, Romanian, Greek et al.
He could just about grasp that something important - no, more than important; with a ten-year-old's vocabulary lacking the superlatives to reach it - was happening, but the details were too complex, and ran through his skull and out through his ears again, even when he was inclined to try to take them in.
Yes, he was aware that what he had called home for a decade was about to change; the names of places and their boundaries wiped away like chalk from a board. The traces would remain, for a time, but in fifty years or a hundred, all manner of occurrences - atrocious and heroic alike - would be attributed to the long-dead Ottomans and their expunged lands, with only a handful of people concerned enough to defend or oppose the prevailing view anyway.
Beyond that, though, and the injustice of the whole thing, Ertugrul would have admitted to being bored, puzzled, and desperate for something to distract him. He could have taken it upon himself to sneak into the hotel garden, but for one whose whole life had been a dream anyway, it was appropriate that he thought about doing so without ever acting on the whim.
The garden of the mind was sharper and more full of adventure than the garden of a Swiss hotel could ever be. There are two kinds of people, realised Osman: those who proceed to the garden even when their state is disintegrating, and feel disappointed with what they find there; and those who make a better, purely mental, garden, and re-create an empire within it.
Monday, 29 November 2010
Tuesday, 23 November 2010
Journalists.
There's a woman who has been suspended in my thoughts for the last few months - as is customary, though, I let events outside of us strangle our relationship at its very birth.
One of the cords which served to choke us was the wish to make us run before we could walk, and I take responsibility for this. In other words, one of us fired an arrow far into the future, before it was anything like appropriate to do so, and the full force of the arrow's impact was taken by a foetal partnership much too young to absorb it.
The second, no less significant, damage was done by these very pages, and the unending references to Bluefish. I feel that I should set the record straight about this now.
There was a time when 'Bluefish' referred to a particular woman, and the constellation of emotions which were derived from her. Distant and unknowable, Bluefish (the word, for it could be no more than a word) represented the intersection between an unfulfilled wish and the living, breathing woman who would one day be its embodiment.
Whenever we use a person's name, or whenever a person's name is replaced by something which later represents it, then the name (or its substitute) floats on a river of memories, or a river of future memories. Each drop of water is a moment in time past, or a moment yet to be experienced, and it so transpired that when I thrust my hand into the blackness, Bluefish emerged wriggling into the daylight of consciousness.
At one point, Bluefish stood for the overblown arrogance which declares it has smashed the pitiful existing tenets of human love, and re-written them in a new language. Later, of course, her name contained the defeat of this idea, and the return to earth from some improbable summit.
Remember, the author of this blog used to be a journalist. It might have been some years ago, but the main trick of the trade - the same one the mathematician uses, when writing an equation, that sees elaborate concepts crunched into an abbreviated series of letters and figures - dies hard.
It's more prevalent in the tabloid Press, and usually pejorative: scientists re-invented as the schoolyard insult 'boffin,' Members of the European Parliament reduced to 'Eurocrats,' and business owners called 'tycoons.' In this way, whole classes of people are given a stereotypical, easy label, which bobs about on its own semantic river.
For your author, now, 'Bluefish' is the same: it is a convention, a mechanism which dredges the bed of the past in the hope of finding something new, it is a set of parentheses of which the leftmost bracket starts in December 2008, and the closing bracket places itself in February or March 2010.
We talk about the Second World War, the Stone Age, and the Victorian era, and everyone knows approximately what we mean. Similarly, when I mention Bluefish, it is these days no more than a method of labelling time.
One of the cords which served to choke us was the wish to make us run before we could walk, and I take responsibility for this. In other words, one of us fired an arrow far into the future, before it was anything like appropriate to do so, and the full force of the arrow's impact was taken by a foetal partnership much too young to absorb it.
The second, no less significant, damage was done by these very pages, and the unending references to Bluefish. I feel that I should set the record straight about this now.
There was a time when 'Bluefish' referred to a particular woman, and the constellation of emotions which were derived from her. Distant and unknowable, Bluefish (the word, for it could be no more than a word) represented the intersection between an unfulfilled wish and the living, breathing woman who would one day be its embodiment.
Whenever we use a person's name, or whenever a person's name is replaced by something which later represents it, then the name (or its substitute) floats on a river of memories, or a river of future memories. Each drop of water is a moment in time past, or a moment yet to be experienced, and it so transpired that when I thrust my hand into the blackness, Bluefish emerged wriggling into the daylight of consciousness.
At one point, Bluefish stood for the overblown arrogance which declares it has smashed the pitiful existing tenets of human love, and re-written them in a new language. Later, of course, her name contained the defeat of this idea, and the return to earth from some improbable summit.
Remember, the author of this blog used to be a journalist. It might have been some years ago, but the main trick of the trade - the same one the mathematician uses, when writing an equation, that sees elaborate concepts crunched into an abbreviated series of letters and figures - dies hard.
It's more prevalent in the tabloid Press, and usually pejorative: scientists re-invented as the schoolyard insult 'boffin,' Members of the European Parliament reduced to 'Eurocrats,' and business owners called 'tycoons.' In this way, whole classes of people are given a stereotypical, easy label, which bobs about on its own semantic river.
For your author, now, 'Bluefish' is the same: it is a convention, a mechanism which dredges the bed of the past in the hope of finding something new, it is a set of parentheses of which the leftmost bracket starts in December 2008, and the closing bracket places itself in February or March 2010.
We talk about the Second World War, the Stone Age, and the Victorian era, and everyone knows approximately what we mean. Similarly, when I mention Bluefish, it is these days no more than a method of labelling time.
Saturday, 20 November 2010
Realisation.
I stared at my mother for a second as though she had taken leave of her senses.
Upon emerging from the kitchen in her house, she asked me to close the door behind me, and it was at that point that that I froze on the spot and opened my mouth.
Then my brain clicked into gear, and my face lost the look of surprise which it had just registered.
I'd imagined that my mother had gone mad because, had I closed the door behind me, then it would leave Danny unable to cross the boundary between the living room and the kitchen, and I'd only end up having to get up and open it for him anyway.
Danny, of course, is gone, though, and I'd overlooked that fact for a second - his physical being is replaced by a large framed photo which is unlikely to ask to be let into the kitchen any time soon.
It isn't that I don't accept it, but that I have difficulty in processing it. In other words, it takes time for the reality of a situation to separate out from the kaleidoscope of thoughts, and for the separated ideas to be permanently internalised.
When I arrived at my mother's on Thursday afternoon, I was locked out of the house, having forgotten to pick up my key when I left here. It meant I was stood outside for a good ten minutes, and the wind was agitating the shrubbery in the neighbour's garden.
Danny would hide in there a lot, and when I saw the movement caused by the wind, I looked for a few seconds for the black-and-white cat responsible. This time, though, there was no surprise or misinterpretation - I knew I'd not see him, but nevertheless I searched.
Less than two weeks after his departure, Danny is Schrödinger's cat as far as I am concerned - depending on who I am with, or where I am, or my state of mind, he is sometimes alive, and sometimes dead.
I know, truly I know, that the cat represented by the photograph is irretrievable. Likewise, the image of Bluefish which I have saved on my computer - there is no prospect of snapping my fingers, uttering an invocation, and a smiling Australian woman emerging, unflustered, from its perimeter; and banging the plastic fork on the feeding dish won't set Danny in pursuit of his next meal.
When everything else has gone, whole lives are reduced to a batch of photographs, on which we stake everything. Since December 5 last year, Bluefish is no more and no less than three or four flat, dead images. Since November 10, Danny is no more than his two dimensional-photograph, trapped forever behind a wall of glass.
Yet we stake everything on these things, attempting to use the last remnants of history as the platform upon which to build some sort of future. It pains me to report that I don't appear to be doing a very good job of it.
Upon emerging from the kitchen in her house, she asked me to close the door behind me, and it was at that point that that I froze on the spot and opened my mouth.
Then my brain clicked into gear, and my face lost the look of surprise which it had just registered.
I'd imagined that my mother had gone mad because, had I closed the door behind me, then it would leave Danny unable to cross the boundary between the living room and the kitchen, and I'd only end up having to get up and open it for him anyway.
Danny, of course, is gone, though, and I'd overlooked that fact for a second - his physical being is replaced by a large framed photo which is unlikely to ask to be let into the kitchen any time soon.
It isn't that I don't accept it, but that I have difficulty in processing it. In other words, it takes time for the reality of a situation to separate out from the kaleidoscope of thoughts, and for the separated ideas to be permanently internalised.
When I arrived at my mother's on Thursday afternoon, I was locked out of the house, having forgotten to pick up my key when I left here. It meant I was stood outside for a good ten minutes, and the wind was agitating the shrubbery in the neighbour's garden.
Danny would hide in there a lot, and when I saw the movement caused by the wind, I looked for a few seconds for the black-and-white cat responsible. This time, though, there was no surprise or misinterpretation - I knew I'd not see him, but nevertheless I searched.
Less than two weeks after his departure, Danny is Schrödinger's cat as far as I am concerned - depending on who I am with, or where I am, or my state of mind, he is sometimes alive, and sometimes dead.
I know, truly I know, that the cat represented by the photograph is irretrievable. Likewise, the image of Bluefish which I have saved on my computer - there is no prospect of snapping my fingers, uttering an invocation, and a smiling Australian woman emerging, unflustered, from its perimeter; and banging the plastic fork on the feeding dish won't set Danny in pursuit of his next meal.
When everything else has gone, whole lives are reduced to a batch of photographs, on which we stake everything. Since December 5 last year, Bluefish is no more and no less than three or four flat, dead images. Since November 10, Danny is no more than his two dimensional-photograph, trapped forever behind a wall of glass.
Yet we stake everything on these things, attempting to use the last remnants of history as the platform upon which to build some sort of future. It pains me to report that I don't appear to be doing a very good job of it.
Monday, 15 November 2010
Two.
Had history been other than it was, Ertugrul Osman was destined to become one of the most powerful men on earth.
Had the Ottoman Empire not met its death in 1923, when Ertugrul Osman was only 11 years old, then things would have been very different. Instead of being the one known as the last Ottoman, arriving just too late to stir the embers of the expiring dynasty, his hereditary luck would have immediately granted him a place in history - and not in the way he's currently remembered, if indeed he's remembered at all.
For Ertugrul Osman was fourth in-line to the great throne at the Sublime Porte at the point the Treaty of Lausanne, which divvied up the Osmanic carcass, was signed on July 24, 1923. His great future, and the dream of restoring his empire's hold on an area which once spanned vast swathes of three continents, was over before it had even begun.
Who could have blamed Ertugrul Osman if he had gone mad at that point, and spent the rest of his days moving a series of blue-topped drawing pins (representing Ottoman forces) over a map of southern Europe, North Africa, and parts of Asia, until they vastly outnumbered the red-topped drawing pins (representing the infidels?) It would have been understandable if his mortal hand - it should have been the unimpeachable, lightning-bringing appendage of a godhead but for a kink of history! - had swept away each and every red drawing pin, beyond the very boundaries of the map and into oblivion.
Who could have blamed Ertugrul Osman if he'd kept cats named after all the old imperial capitals: Sögüt, Bursa, Edirne, Constantinople, and drowned the pure white kitten called Istanbul in a bucket of water?
Somewhere along the line, fate kicked Ertugrul squarely in the face, in a double-image both hilarious and tragic: a roundhouse to the chops performed by the devastating offspring of Chuck Norris and Chun-Li from the Streetfighter video games, that caused Ertugrul to comically rear up into the air, a look of exaggerated astonishment fixed permanently to his face.
Everything that we laugh at is simultaneously deadening; there is a darkness that syncopates it, and makes it ordinary. As we hold our sides at the airborne Ertugrul Osman, our conscience is pricked because we make mirth at the demise of an empire, and its slow disaggregating in front of our streaming (with laughter) eyes.
When we laugh at something like this, we are overjoyed because nothing lasts forever, and because everything carries within it the seeds of its own destruction. It is a rare thing to look our own mortality squarely in the eye, and frighten it away with the roaring which comes from within. The tragedy of Ertugrul Osman is the tragedy of the human condition - the only difference being that, for us, it can never be other than it is.
Had the Ottoman Empire not met its death in 1923, when Ertugrul Osman was only 11 years old, then things would have been very different. Instead of being the one known as the last Ottoman, arriving just too late to stir the embers of the expiring dynasty, his hereditary luck would have immediately granted him a place in history - and not in the way he's currently remembered, if indeed he's remembered at all.
For Ertugrul Osman was fourth in-line to the great throne at the Sublime Porte at the point the Treaty of Lausanne, which divvied up the Osmanic carcass, was signed on July 24, 1923. His great future, and the dream of restoring his empire's hold on an area which once spanned vast swathes of three continents, was over before it had even begun.
Who could have blamed Ertugrul Osman if he had gone mad at that point, and spent the rest of his days moving a series of blue-topped drawing pins (representing Ottoman forces) over a map of southern Europe, North Africa, and parts of Asia, until they vastly outnumbered the red-topped drawing pins (representing the infidels?) It would have been understandable if his mortal hand - it should have been the unimpeachable, lightning-bringing appendage of a godhead but for a kink of history! - had swept away each and every red drawing pin, beyond the very boundaries of the map and into oblivion.
Who could have blamed Ertugrul Osman if he'd kept cats named after all the old imperial capitals: Sögüt, Bursa, Edirne, Constantinople, and drowned the pure white kitten called Istanbul in a bucket of water?
Somewhere along the line, fate kicked Ertugrul squarely in the face, in a double-image both hilarious and tragic: a roundhouse to the chops performed by the devastating offspring of Chuck Norris and Chun-Li from the Streetfighter video games, that caused Ertugrul to comically rear up into the air, a look of exaggerated astonishment fixed permanently to his face.
Everything that we laugh at is simultaneously deadening; there is a darkness that syncopates it, and makes it ordinary. As we hold our sides at the airborne Ertugrul Osman, our conscience is pricked because we make mirth at the demise of an empire, and its slow disaggregating in front of our streaming (with laughter) eyes.
When we laugh at something like this, we are overjoyed because nothing lasts forever, and because everything carries within it the seeds of its own destruction. It is a rare thing to look our own mortality squarely in the eye, and frighten it away with the roaring which comes from within. The tragedy of Ertugrul Osman is the tragedy of the human condition - the only difference being that, for us, it can never be other than it is.
Friday, 12 November 2010
Obituary.
So Danny, then, has gone, and it's as much as I can do to write about it in even a cursory fashion.
The overly-sized, overly-loved cat whose every move I have watched (or demanded reports of) for the last 14 years, was put to sleep on Wednesday at 10am.
Mobility had become a struggle (not impossible, but more difficult) and a long-standing ear infection was causing problems too.
Prescription after prescription did little to solve either complaint, and on Wednesday, it was again an exertion to get into the kitchen for breakfast. After breakfast, I noticed that the troublesome ear was bleeding; and my mother (with whom he lived) and I decided that enough was enough.
I'd imagined it was going to happen on Tuesday, but it was postponed in the hope that the latest anti-inflammatories would fix the limping which had troubled him for the last couple of weeks. That wasn't the case, though. Both Monday and Tuesday nights - when I was supposed to be sleeping - I was trying to work out the probability of either the ear or the limping being resolved satisfactorily and in the long-term, and couldn't help but feel utterly pessimistic.
The love which wants to end suffering is perhaps even more important than romantic love - the difficult, decisive move to deliver permanent darkness (from Danny's perspective) and a heaviness which will lift in time, but the imprint left by the weight will remain in perpetuity (from the perspective of everyone who knew Danny.)
In the early hours of Tuesday, I said a prolonged farewell, resting my head on his back, one of my hands stroking his fur, and wishing him well on the journey he was about to undertake. I explained that he had always been given the best possible life, and it was now our duty to give him the best possible death. In the middle of this sermon, he spun around and tried to bite the hand which was in contact with him. Even in the last 36 hours of his life, he still didn't care too much for his excessively-sentimental co-owner.
You will be well-remembered, Danny: the recalcitrant barrier sitting in the middle of a roll of wrapping paper at 2am on Christmas Day as I was trying to parcel up my last-minute gift ideas. It was quite deliberate; you stepping out of the cardboard box in which you'd been sleeping in order to sabotage my best efforts.
Inevitably, we'd end up with a ticker-tape of paper all over my mother's living room, with any number of shiny, spherical decorations miraculously 'fallen' from the tree and thrown across the floor, catching the light with you in skittish pursuit.
You, the catapult which would invade my room at 5:20am, and crash into the middle of my 'sleeping' body. I was wide awake, because the creaking of the door had given you away long ago, and was waiting for the impact to arrive. I'd still pretend to be asleep, though, until your head was so close to mine that your whiskers were tickling my face; then I'd exclaim: what the hell's going on here! and you'd purr ecstatically as my arms closed around you.
Even you, though, were subject to the brutal law of impermanence which brings low everything in the end. At least I take solace in the fact that human intervention saved you from the further ravages of age (for you were 98 in human years) and this relinquishing of your vessel at the 'right' time is the greatest symbol of how much you are loved.
The overly-sized, overly-loved cat whose every move I have watched (or demanded reports of) for the last 14 years, was put to sleep on Wednesday at 10am.
Mobility had become a struggle (not impossible, but more difficult) and a long-standing ear infection was causing problems too.
Prescription after prescription did little to solve either complaint, and on Wednesday, it was again an exertion to get into the kitchen for breakfast. After breakfast, I noticed that the troublesome ear was bleeding; and my mother (with whom he lived) and I decided that enough was enough.
I'd imagined it was going to happen on Tuesday, but it was postponed in the hope that the latest anti-inflammatories would fix the limping which had troubled him for the last couple of weeks. That wasn't the case, though. Both Monday and Tuesday nights - when I was supposed to be sleeping - I was trying to work out the probability of either the ear or the limping being resolved satisfactorily and in the long-term, and couldn't help but feel utterly pessimistic.
The love which wants to end suffering is perhaps even more important than romantic love - the difficult, decisive move to deliver permanent darkness (from Danny's perspective) and a heaviness which will lift in time, but the imprint left by the weight will remain in perpetuity (from the perspective of everyone who knew Danny.)
In the early hours of Tuesday, I said a prolonged farewell, resting my head on his back, one of my hands stroking his fur, and wishing him well on the journey he was about to undertake. I explained that he had always been given the best possible life, and it was now our duty to give him the best possible death. In the middle of this sermon, he spun around and tried to bite the hand which was in contact with him. Even in the last 36 hours of his life, he still didn't care too much for his excessively-sentimental co-owner.
You will be well-remembered, Danny: the recalcitrant barrier sitting in the middle of a roll of wrapping paper at 2am on Christmas Day as I was trying to parcel up my last-minute gift ideas. It was quite deliberate; you stepping out of the cardboard box in which you'd been sleeping in order to sabotage my best efforts.
Inevitably, we'd end up with a ticker-tape of paper all over my mother's living room, with any number of shiny, spherical decorations miraculously 'fallen' from the tree and thrown across the floor, catching the light with you in skittish pursuit.
You, the catapult which would invade my room at 5:20am, and crash into the middle of my 'sleeping' body. I was wide awake, because the creaking of the door had given you away long ago, and was waiting for the impact to arrive. I'd still pretend to be asleep, though, until your head was so close to mine that your whiskers were tickling my face; then I'd exclaim: what the hell's going on here! and you'd purr ecstatically as my arms closed around you.
Even you, though, were subject to the brutal law of impermanence which brings low everything in the end. At least I take solace in the fact that human intervention saved you from the further ravages of age (for you were 98 in human years) and this relinquishing of your vessel at the 'right' time is the greatest symbol of how much you are loved.
Sunday, 7 November 2010
One.
The flyer that came through the door stood out amongst the piles of unopened letters from broadband companies, Chinese takeaways, and threatening missives from the TV Licensing people.
It stood out because it was made up of cut-out letters from a newspaper, like the reminder of an IOU from an irate Mafia boss, and it stood out because of its original take on the spelling of English words:
GONE MISSIN. BELOVVED FAMILY PET. CAT. GINJER WIT WHITE MARKINS. ANSWERS T NAME OF FLUFY. LAST SIN NR MARKIT. PLEZE CALL 07766....
Jason Tipler looked at the note for a couple of seconds, and then put it on the table with all the other unsolicited junk. Cats were always going missing in this part of Yorkshire - they'd not got a chance on the main road that led out of town and towards civilisation.
That's just how it is, thought Jason Tipler, an unsentimental man in his early forties. You go out into the road, and you get eaten by a car. Or a van. Doesn't matter whether you're a cat, or a man - if you take a step too far, you're done for. He yawned, stretching his arms towards the sky, and considered some more how this is the one rule of the universe - horses for courses. And cats for roads. Or not.
This part of the world, whose boundaries consist of four corners in a rough parallelogram, respectively: the post office, which opened for business when the local youth weren't burning its innards out for fun; the convenience store owned by the wizened and sunken old Ken; a green expanse for recreation (and recreation, as far as we are concerned, involves shooting up, with the competitive part entailing not being caught); and the road out of here that leads elsewhere; yes, this part of the world, they make them tough and unsympathetic.
There used to be more markers here, and in years gone by we could've described the shape of the world in different terms. It was never Buckingham bloody Palace, but there was at least a garage, and a pet shop, and even what you might have almost called a supermarket. Not anymore, though. Most people had taken their business elsewhere long ago.... downsizing, they called it, or upscaling, but the outcome was the same for those who live here.
It stood out because it was made up of cut-out letters from a newspaper, like the reminder of an IOU from an irate Mafia boss, and it stood out because of its original take on the spelling of English words:
GONE MISSIN. BELOVVED FAMILY PET. CAT. GINJER WIT WHITE MARKINS. ANSWERS T NAME OF FLUFY. LAST SIN NR MARKIT. PLEZE CALL 07766....
Jason Tipler looked at the note for a couple of seconds, and then put it on the table with all the other unsolicited junk. Cats were always going missing in this part of Yorkshire - they'd not got a chance on the main road that led out of town and towards civilisation.
That's just how it is, thought Jason Tipler, an unsentimental man in his early forties. You go out into the road, and you get eaten by a car. Or a van. Doesn't matter whether you're a cat, or a man - if you take a step too far, you're done for. He yawned, stretching his arms towards the sky, and considered some more how this is the one rule of the universe - horses for courses. And cats for roads. Or not.
This part of the world, whose boundaries consist of four corners in a rough parallelogram, respectively: the post office, which opened for business when the local youth weren't burning its innards out for fun; the convenience store owned by the wizened and sunken old Ken; a green expanse for recreation (and recreation, as far as we are concerned, involves shooting up, with the competitive part entailing not being caught); and the road out of here that leads elsewhere; yes, this part of the world, they make them tough and unsympathetic.
There used to be more markers here, and in years gone by we could've described the shape of the world in different terms. It was never Buckingham bloody Palace, but there was at least a garage, and a pet shop, and even what you might have almost called a supermarket. Not anymore, though. Most people had taken their business elsewhere long ago.... downsizing, they called it, or upscaling, but the outcome was the same for those who live here.
Friday, 5 November 2010
Confidence.
When writing, we are attempting to correct the asymmetry between the internal world of our thoughts, and the powers of understanding of our hypothetical audience.
But wait: there are issues that I have to resolve with myself first, before I can even think about those who want to read the things I have to say. I must be certain that my own expressive powers are the best they can be, else how can I ever hope for an anonymous other to pick up the thread I leave dangling?
When these powers of expression are at their peak, the outcome is pleasing, for a moment or two. At such times, it feels (misleadingly) as though I’m capable of writing forever – the catch-all word ‘confidence’ is present and correct, and I sit upon its magic carpet and fly along for a short while.
Confidence, what is it? We’ve been here before, in the dim and distant recesses of the thousands of words on here. It is nothing more than the repetition of an act, time after time, so that it can be reproduced perfectly at any given moment: the human-turned-machine turns out copy after copy of the only thing it has an aptitude for, and never breaks down. (For this is the definition of a machine – it has a limited repertoire, but performs brilliantly to its specifications. So a powerful chess computer can crush even a grand master, but the same computer couldn’t boil a packet of Super Noodles, or do the washing-up afterwards.)
Confidence, then, equates roughly to the following (incorrect) maxim that practice makes perfect - and, yet, the more your author writes, the less confident I am in what's produced. It's the law of diminishing returns - the more I strive to produce, the more ordinary I become.
Over the last days, the thought of writing something - anything - has occupied my mind relentlessly, and yet I cower away from the keyboard as if it's burning hot. I'll go into the kitchen to make a drink, come back again with a drink I didn't want in the first place, and then fail to write anything.
It's not a shortage of ideas, or a shortage of desire or interest - it's just exhaustion caused by the striated unavoidability of event after event after event, delivered upon a person who's too weak to tolerate their aggregation. When I say 'event' I'm referring to an intrusive thought, a work-related mistake, a broken promise to the self to get up and go to the gym. The little things add up, and the result is the spiritual death of a thousand cuts.
Writing is the most important thing in the world, and by far the least important. It at once saves any remaining sanity, whilst sending the unfortunate completely mad. I believe I can continue this way forever, and yet I know there's not a single world left in me.
But wait: there are issues that I have to resolve with myself first, before I can even think about those who want to read the things I have to say. I must be certain that my own expressive powers are the best they can be, else how can I ever hope for an anonymous other to pick up the thread I leave dangling?
When these powers of expression are at their peak, the outcome is pleasing, for a moment or two. At such times, it feels (misleadingly) as though I’m capable of writing forever – the catch-all word ‘confidence’ is present and correct, and I sit upon its magic carpet and fly along for a short while.
Confidence, what is it? We’ve been here before, in the dim and distant recesses of the thousands of words on here. It is nothing more than the repetition of an act, time after time, so that it can be reproduced perfectly at any given moment: the human-turned-machine turns out copy after copy of the only thing it has an aptitude for, and never breaks down. (For this is the definition of a machine – it has a limited repertoire, but performs brilliantly to its specifications. So a powerful chess computer can crush even a grand master, but the same computer couldn’t boil a packet of Super Noodles, or do the washing-up afterwards.)
Confidence, then, equates roughly to the following (incorrect) maxim that practice makes perfect - and, yet, the more your author writes, the less confident I am in what's produced. It's the law of diminishing returns - the more I strive to produce, the more ordinary I become.
Over the last days, the thought of writing something - anything - has occupied my mind relentlessly, and yet I cower away from the keyboard as if it's burning hot. I'll go into the kitchen to make a drink, come back again with a drink I didn't want in the first place, and then fail to write anything.
It's not a shortage of ideas, or a shortage of desire or interest - it's just exhaustion caused by the striated unavoidability of event after event after event, delivered upon a person who's too weak to tolerate their aggregation. When I say 'event' I'm referring to an intrusive thought, a work-related mistake, a broken promise to the self to get up and go to the gym. The little things add up, and the result is the spiritual death of a thousand cuts.
Writing is the most important thing in the world, and by far the least important. It at once saves any remaining sanity, whilst sending the unfortunate completely mad. I believe I can continue this way forever, and yet I know there's not a single world left in me.
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