But, take heart . . .
One can console one's self by repeating the soothing mantra, "Oh well... no matter... five hundred years from now nobody will remember either the failer or the failure."
And that makes it all better.
Right?
. . .
A few days ago I wrote a couple of short pieces that I hesitate to call poems but cannot come up with a more fitting label for them. I submitted them to my Writers Group and was surprised to receive some favorable critiques and some excellent suggestions for improvement. Here (revised to incorporate one of those suggestions) is the first piece.
shades
I did not know
it takes at least
seventy years
to penetrate
dark matter
sultry smoke
to see
in sane simplicity
on this familiar plane
separated by energy
from the darker side
. . .
This morning just before going out for my daily fitness walk I happened upon this comic book (excuse me... graphic novel) professionally composed and entertainingly presented, although with an immediately obvious commercial purpose. And I found it to be both charming and informative, not to mention provocative.
Again, here is the link:
http://bnreview.barnesandnoble.com/t5/Drawn-to-Read/Common-as-Air/ba-p/3167
. . .
Informed by my Web Host that my annual domain registration and my web-hosting fee were both due at the end of this month, I paid them this week even though the hosting free was more than double last year's fee. So now I have vowed to go back and refurbish all the pages on my genechambers.com website.
It certainly needs refurbishing.
Now all I have to do is to come up with a fresh and original idea for transforming it from a ho-hum distant planetoid at the edge of the galaxy into a blazing and spectacular hub of teeming and exciting activity at the center of the universe.
Oh wait . . . I forgot, the universe has neither edges nor a center.
Bad metaphor.
Damn!
Dear Gene Chambers,
ReplyDeleteHave you noticed that whenever you stake a claim to apathy toward writing your novel, you write some of your best prose?
Take the first paragraph of what you wrote today.
Begin with the word "soul" and thus eliminate all the words ahead of it.
Precede the word "soul" with the pronoun "his" or "her," or with a character's name.
Replace the word "authors" with a different noun.
The result, you'll discover, is a grand descriptive paragraph that just might belong inside your novel, a paragraph far more delicious than any of those chemically injected, microwaveable dinners you sometimes consume and whose packages you photograph.
If on the other hand, you'd rather eat another Circle K delight than include this pretty prose inside your manuscript, then give the graph to me and allow me to corrupt it and place it so polluted inside my own novel.
Thanks much,
AVT
Anthony,
ReplyDeleteI did as you asked and was (almost) astounded by what I then read, by what I had written.
Is it not surprising what a man can sometimes discover about himself? And also how he can suddenly become able to experience that which was once commonplace as it, without warning, springs forth delightfully afresh while viewing a thing through the detached eyes of another?
Each day I learn so much from doing nothing more than merely (listening?) living, and by simply interpreting this life's myriad of seemingly miraculous experiences.
Thank you, friend Anthony, for your insightful comment.