"I hold any writer sufficiently justified who is himself in love with his theme." -- Henry James
Thursday, September 1, 2016
Different and the Same
“they come
different and the same
with each it is different and the same
with each the absence of love is different
with each the absence of love is the same”-- Samuel Beckett
I'm sorry to have been, as it were, away all this time. I wasn't really of course. For a bit of it -- two weeks -- I was in fact away to Pennsylvania and the old folks. As for the rest... I was still drawing, as you will see if you care to go back a bit. I am putting up pictures now backwards; roughly from when they were drawn, but not always, starting now and going back as far as the pictures last. In the end, I do not doubt, there will not be enough to fill the gap. There will still be a gap when I'm done. Sorry. We do what we can, no?
What I couldn't seem to do for some time now was write -- anything. Don't know why. Perhaps the current election-cycle proved just too much. Perhaps the news. There's been a fair bit of news and nearly none of it good. Perhaps it was nothing so grand as all that. Maybe it was as simple as not having much to say. maybe I was simply tired of the way I say things. Any voice, even or specially one's one, can get awfully wearisome over time. I was tired the -- maybe -- of myself. It can happen.
For whatever reason or for no reason at all then I haven't been doing lately that which I have otherwise been doing for years which was posting here; writing, quoting, posting. Drawing, as I said, but otherwise not.
Come to find out, even as my silence lengthened, I kept scribbling pictures at the cash register, while I watched videos or listened to music. As I've said too many times already, my mother says I drew before i talked. Not so much a habit then, or an occupation as simply a part of my waking life.
Writing on the other hand I've always had to make myself do. Much as i live to read, I do not love to write. I make myself, or did, and I am not unhappy to have done, but it seems at some point I stopped and only now do I find myself even willing to do so much as this, by way of apology, I suppose, though not for not writing when I couldn't do, but for not saying so sooner, in case anyone noticed.
Whatever there is then, before and after this, and that mostly pictures, will have to do for the time being. Enough will have to be enough. I like a good deal of what I've done lately in the way of drawing, so there's hope there. As for this business of thinking and typing, well... we shall just have to wait and see, won't we? Meanwhile: on.
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