Simplify, Simplify…

Novelist Dorothy Sayers’ most well-known character, the aristocratic detective Lord Peter Wimsey, is welcome to his opinion that “a facility for quotation covers the absence of original thought”, but he’ll not dissuade me from my fondness for quotations. I collect pithy selections from other writers’ work and correspondence with an enthusiasm usually reserved for baseball card traders or fans of architectural remnants. I’ve always found a good quotation focuses my attention, helping to make another person’s wit or wisdom accessible in new and useful ways.

Like any collector, I enjoy showing off my treasures. A few of my favorites are posted here. Occasionally I pass along tidbits I find especially piquant or amusing via Twitter, but most of the time I go old-school, taping current favorites to the bottom of my computer monitor. Rarely inspirational in any traditional sense, these hand-written snippets are meant to provide the kind of wacky encouragement and perspective I find stimulating.

They change frequently and vary according to the nature of my current frustration. Only one has earned the privilege of continuous posting, a friend’s utterly perfect description of our beloved computers as “infernal persnickety time-suckers”.  Taken separately, each word is apt. Taken together, they bubble up into a perfect verbal storm that never fails to make me laugh, even as it washes my mind clean of whatever cyber-frustrations have built up around my desk.

Sisyphus and the Word-Rocks

I never can remember where I’ve left my car keys.  It slips my mind that I’ve been told to stop at the grocery for milk. I forget to swing by the pharmacy to pick up prescriptions and occasionally I forget to feed the outside cat.  I’m always forgetting this password or that, and I’ve completely forgotten the names of some of my high school chums.  People who claim to know about such things tell me this everyday-forgetting is unremarkable.  A little more age here, a few things more interesting to ponder there, and the mind wanders off, unconcerned with milk, kitties or keys.

Most recently, I very nearly forgot I’d promised Ruth, of the lovely blog Synch-ro-niz-ing, that I’d accept her invitation to join with a group of bloggers and write about the beginnings of The Task at Hand ~ more specifically, how it received its title.  It’s a story I’m happy to recount for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the sheer pleasure of remembering those first, halting steps onto the path called “writing”.

Furnishing Our Stories

 

I suppose there are as many reasons to blog as there are bloggers.  Curiosity about the world, a willingness to accede to Durrell’s conviction that reality can be “reworked to show its significant side“ and the pure pleasure of shaping words all have played a roll in developing and sustaining my personal commitment to this strange new phenomenon of our time.

One thing I particularly enjoy about blogging  is the response I receive from readers.  Comments have ranged from challenging to congratulatory to caustic, but no matter their form, I always find them stimulating and engaging.   To my taste, good blogs exhibit a certain tentativeness, exploring rather than defining the subject at hand, and good comments reflect the same qualities.  Writers and readers work together, inching their way forward through thickets of allusion and argument to reach provisional conclusions.  Occasionally they unearth a real, if unexpected, treasure.

Back to the Scrap Heap

I love researching the pedigree of  blog awards.  It’s a grown-up, vntary version of the forced march our 6th grade Catechism class made through the book of Genesis.  Just as following those Biblical “begats” back through the generations carried us to wholly unrecognizable worlds, tracking the progress of blog awards can lead to strange and mysterious places, not to mention unusual or quirky companions.

When Andi of AndiLit graced me with the Honest Scrap Award, I did what I often do. I worked my way backward: through Courtney at Everything in Between to In the Mainstream, and then on to Allison Writes, where the easy trail grew difficult. No matter. I’ve never been able to make myself keep going on and on down the path toward the origin of an award, partly for fear I might end up somewhere I don’t care to be, like Armed Females of America, and partly because I fear capture by blogs capable of killing my every spare minute of time.  Stop by Neatorama and you’ll see what I mean.

Prowling and pawing around the Honest Scrap heap, one thing I did notice is that no one seems quite sure what the award means.  As Andi put it, “The Honest Scrap Award is – well, I don’t know what it’s for…”  That sentiment’s been echoed by innumerable bloggers who’ve received the award and it was my own first response to the honor.  My second response was curiosity,particularly since scraps have been an important, if unexamined, part of my life since childhood.

Message in a Blog-Bottle

 

Mothers can be difficult to impress, even among the literati.  In an April, 1959 letter written to author Cecil Dawkins, Flannery O’Connor wryly remarks the wonderful news that Cecil has been paid $1,000 for a story.  Noting  her own top payment of $425, Flannery goes on to say,

Your sale to the Post ought to impress your mother greatly.  It sure has impressed my mother, who brought the post card home.  The other day she asked me why I didn’t try to write something that people liked instead of the kind of thing I do write.  Do you think, she said, that you are really using the talent God gave you when you don’t write something that a lot, A LOT of people like?  This always leaves me shaking and speechless, raises my blood pressure 140 degrees, etc.  All I can ever say is, if you have to ask, you’ll never know.

I’m no Flannery O’Connor, but I’ve been rendered equally speechless by my own mother.  When she found my first computer happily ensconced on its desk, Mom nosed around it like a wary dog circling a snake.   ”What are you going to do with it?” she asked.   I didn’t know, and said so.   ”Well, how much did it cost?”  I did know that, and despite reservations born of experience I told her.  The disapproving silence thickened until she could stand it no longer.  “You spent all that money for something and don’t even know how you’re going to use it?”  Her perspective on the situation was clear. My computer was the latest version of  hula-hoops or Mr. Potato Head and I was her idiot child, consumed with a child’s breathless longing to possess the same toys as her friends.