Wednesday, August 13, 2003

Apologies, Emotions, Games and Non-sequiters

One of the things that makes blogging so valuable to me, as I’ve mentioned before, is the sense of community and support I so often feel among my on-line colleagues.  You guys have given me guidance, kind words and a lot of big laffs.  And sometimes you even let me into your lives in painfully private and personal ways so that I can appreciate the vagaries of fate as it tramples each of us in our turn. 

One of my favorite sites is Witt and Wisdom, the creative output of one alleged “CW.” CW has pimped me, berated me, and been one of my most vocal commenters.  I am extremely impressed with the writing I find out here in blogville but he’s in a different class.  When he’s funny he’s hilarious.  When he’s serious he gets right to me and I carry emotions with me all day that are painfully familiar despite having been so recently grafted from some other body’s head. 

Lately CW has had some heavy stuff to share.  I’m not here to sniff his laundry, I’m just recognizing that sometimes challenge and loss conspire to gang up on a person.  He’s written so eloquently about these matters that it’s easy to think he’s got a firm grip on the short hairs of the cosmic crotch.  But that’s what distinguishes a good writer.  I feel that there is a lot going on in CW’s life and heart that will take a while to absorb, if any of it ever makes sense. 

Yesterday I read another potentially powerful, and actually hilarious, CW post about his dad’s health.  It’s a subject that’s been on my mind a lot lately too, and what he said got to me.  I tried writing a glib response, and then a totally off-the-subject response - but afterwards I just felt empty about it.  It’s unusual for me to regret hitting “send” but I did yesterday after my second comment to Witt and Wisdom.

So first I just wanted to tell CW that my silence on serious matters is not to be construed as apathy.  It’s more like being frozen in time and space, feeling compelled to reply but not knowing what to say.  But I’m saying it anyway, so sometimes it comes out wrong or not at all.  Sorry about the circumstances, CW.  Hope things are working out for you and your loved ones the way they’re supposed to. 

Now for two tangents:

The second comment to which I referred above concerned a game that I would like to play with all of you which I am currently calling “Obfuscations,” but which any of you can rename if you come up with a better name for it.  The idea is that, on a given day, people post three stories about themselves, one of which is untrue.  Readers guess in the comments which is the lie.  I think I can get Patricia and Skullbolt on board.  Anybody else want to play?  Maybe next friday, 8/22?

And also: A few days ago I sat with blank pages in my hand, waiting for inspiration to strike me.  I had a lot of words floating around in my head but they weren’t coalescing into any coherent story or under any theme.  I just kept on thinking, “yeah, that sounds good, but what is it saying? and to whom, and why?” - and I couldn’t answer any of those questions so I wrote nothing.  After a few minutes of this, discarding clever locutions because I didn’t know what they meant or where they were going, I gave up on coherence.  (Some may say this happened long ago.  Screw them.)

Here, then, in the incoherent and random order in which they occurred to me, are my new Phrases In Search of a Story:

* a darkness so thick it hurt my eyes
* faster than pain
* disbelief untempered by comprehension
* less an article of faith than a proposition of improbability
* dressed to impress any ex-girlfriends he might encounter
* profundities of irrelevance

If any of you know what I was working toward with any of these snippets, don’t hesitate to crank out a whole story in the comments.  I’d love to find out what I’m talking about.  It might suggest a useful course of therapy.