Gertrude Stein had something to say about this Free Writing business. So did Virginia Woolf. So it must work right? perhaps. Anyway here's another of mine:
It is with the utmost ambivalence that I approach this austere exercise: that of eliciting the most exciting extemporaneous text capable of being written by me, without recourse to lexical collections such as dictionaries and thesauruses. Or Thesauri if you would prefer. It's a good and bad thing - or rather since this is an exercise in word selectivity and associated appropriateness, it is both a beneficial and helpful practice whilst simultaneously being a tedious drudge through the blinding effort of disinterring and excavation words from the dusty cells,caves like crevices and deeply scored interstices of my brain. After all if they (the words) have decided to absent themselves, go on self-imposed exile or even choosing the option of a more benign break such as a vacation from the all consuming effort needed for day to day living, that's fine. As long as you come back smartly when called.
The observant among you will have noticed that I am ferreting around at the moment trying to remember a word that I know which I fully intended to fit into the last sentence but which steadfastly,obstinately,and with the adamantine bloody-mindedness that I have come to learn about when this kind of dispraxia, decides to bring its awkwardness to the game - it won't come until I have stopped thinking about it. Ceased to pontificate, to ruminate, to think deeply as the cogs in the brain squeak around desperate for the oil I am in the process of squirting all over them. Is there another word for squirting? Spilling suggests droplets with no force greater than gravity propelling them along, rather than additional kinetic energy which the image of squirting seems to conjure. Blasting is a bit extreme - although a blast can be relative I suppose. I can imagine writers desperate to avoid cliches could utilise a verb like 'blast' to describe a kind of emphatically energised application of something that might be used for exaggerated effect - like blasting a verruca from the foot. Do you really? I think rather you are seeking to ease the verruca from the foot with the gentle application of medicinally proven pharmaceutical cream rather than aiming both barrels of a Martini Henry at the blight, but such is the desire to see the aberration gone, the foot holder wants to blast it to Kingdom Come - such is the contempt with which it is held and regarded. Extra force brought to the image, induced by the hurtful ire the person would undoubtedly feel for the affliction - 'I'll blast it off the face of the Earth,' might well be a sentiment that lacks logic - but putting cold logic to one side and emote a bit more and yes, you would want to blast it to Hell. And that's just a verruca a small plantar wart lesion that appears on the sole of the foot and has the temerity to resemble a mini cauliflower. Not exactly pancreatic cancer. What would be needed if one maintained such metaphoric grandiosity: a scud missile aimed at the solarplexes? a nuclear bomb blast piped down your throat.
Recourse to overstatement is understandable in these situations. The worse the condition the more fire added to the ire. Back to that break which actually wasn't a break but something undergone by students who look to take a year off, or a professional who feels that the time is right or ripe to drop out of the usual routine and take a - damn it's gone again. Its gone. It's swirling around in the maze of my conscience looking for the exit door. It's ascending stairs, practically falling down others, glancing concernedly at signs and maps to help the navigational process. Perhaps stopping occasionally to ask a passing emotion or a wandering word or trivial memory nugget not being summoned whether they know the where the exit is.
Other items who happen to be travelling sedately from brain to mouth towards the exit or various exits might tire of seeing this fool flailing around without a clue - too tight through inactivity and self-imposed inertia to purchase a helpful navigation aid - something like a helpful link. Links are thing that help out in situations nay crises like this. The links can act as guides for the blind the deaf and the disoriented - but if you're too good, to cool even to bother forging links you are guileless as well as guide less and your efforts will be thwarted, curtailed, blocked off. And that's what we're experiencing here - a blockage.
Blockages can be avoided. Links will ease the paths of the seriously lost or those who have lost direction in all senses of the word. Has it lost direction in its deeper psychological sense - a direction in live to know where it is going and perhaps ultimately where it will end up. Or are we merely talking here about finding the way to the tongue from the deeper and dustier recesses of the brain - tucked being the folds, lodged in the dark and fustian corners where things like prompts and guides and linkages can't penetrate.
Penetrate to probe in and exercise a role that suggests that encouragement under pressure will caused those who are either racked with timidity or timorousness or lain injured or stagnant through obesity. Penetrate and his friends extricate and release should bind together, pool their redoubtable resources and bring forth those who find through time and inactivity an ability to move into the light.
Extricate and his cousins extrication and extraction can only really mobilize when locate and penetrate have completed their tasks. Find and bring to safety. Locate using all his perceptive senses will use his own helpers - intelligence helping elves will scour around asking questions positing answers from lies and drawing enough strands out to bring to the chief of this area Intelligence. He (intelligence) will then formulate a hypothesis through a narrowing down through selectivity of information of most probably areas where the word might be hidden might just be. Once he has the information it is within his demesne he can make a judgement about where the search teams might prioritize their future efforts if the search is to continue. At the moment he's thinking that the word might begin with the letter V. A valetudinarian? A valetudinarian is someone who things he has multiple diseases, I think - perhaps someone who claims to have so much he habitually weakens any assertion he might have that has more than a grain of truth to it. Victor, veracity voracious, vulpine veracity, vinous, viscous vampish, vicarious. Nothing to find there.
All interesting in their own right. A winner, a truth, something that resembles a fox, something that resembles food and wine, a fluid of dense and sticky quality that reduces stress on other material, a description of feminine activity suggestive of overt flirtation, and something that is associated with liability through a third party (all have been guessed at and no apologies will be forthcoming to excuse the erroneous content of the definitions found theretofore). But perhaps not even V. It still hasn't arrived. Intelligence is going to have to muster its helpers - bring in the team leaders of instinct, a branch of memory called conversational snap-shot, contemplation, readers-write and quiz-master and brief them on what it needs to make a better hypothesis. Then the search and rescue squad can get in find their hostage, kill off any shacklers, slackers, binders and de-motivators, and bounce our victim - because yes it is a victim, into the open for use. Conversational snap shot is on his feet and speaking let's listen to what he has to say:
'I have to say that I do recall an instance when this word was used. It was during the hosts time on the Divisional Group when he addressing his team leader a certain Mr Philpot. He said to Mr P 'I hope you enjoy your such and such as you deserve it.' The intimation there was that this break in the normality of Mr P's life was to be welcomed and nourishing in both body and soul and that this break is something that is looked forward to - not in the manner of retirement where all is behind you, but in the manner of I've worked really hard for a period of time and I wish to opt out of this for indeterminate amount of time but usually not.' exceeding one calendrical year.'
Intelligence: Think hard snap-shot try to recall the exact conversation'
Snap-shot: I believe Mr P said something like 'You're right, if anyone deserves a blank it's me. I've been at this particular grindstone for thirty five years and I've still got ten to go before early retirement.'
Intelligence: Grindstone Snap-shot? Did he really say that or are you allowing Imagination to infiltrate your memory. Is he there playing with the precision of your memorizing, filling bleak gaps with colour for the future betterment his skills when they are called upon.
Snap shot. 'You might be right intelligence. Imagination does play havoc with the specificity of my accounts. It's as if one pause gives him the opportunity to inject an element of overt fictionalization possibly for his own and no-one else s benefit. I'm doing my best to accurately recall the finest details of the utmost veracity, I turn around and always he' there interjecting with things, weaving descriptive spells that are so interesting and fill the void so beautifully I sometimes feel powerless to resist them.'
Intelligence: Pull yourself together snap-shot. You occupy a very different thought area. You are to do with facts. Your milieu is in the frozen image and the exactitude of detail contained therein. His area is the dramatic, the poetic, the creation of vibrant moments - he knows little to nothing of the real truth. That said I know where his skills can take us when the facts are in short supply. I admit that his wayward way with things might help here - come up Imagination let me interrogate you - entrance yourself, let the nonsense flow - we're getting nowhere with facts.
Imagination: Thank you. I was wondering when I was going to be recruited into this... sham. Surely everyone knows by now that what I have is the ability to construct a wondrous framework from which facts can be plucked. I can use image and colour and ludicrousness to create things. Chaos theory is my specialty. There is always order from mess if you know where to look. From the farrago new truths can be deciphered and grafted onto facts with pegs that link all the way metaphorically speaking, to the Moon and beyond. I always say we can work in co-operation. Cohorts rather than adversaries. Blended skills for ultimate solutions. I can fly like a butterfly, flit from one word to another and cover everything in a cloud of gold-dust, fine as talcum. I can sew the finest filaments of silver into the drabbest of material, pull and stretch and engorge anything with colour, everything that comes my way. And that's what you will get you back - a word that looks like an elephant in a purple onesie wearing a gold papal cap and rollerskating to the tune of I Was Kaiser Bill's Batman whilst a flapping sign around its neck reads... 'sabbatical' which is the word you've all been looking for, am I right? I know I am. I'm not alone, there's loads of us on the right side that are ignored during these deep thinking times. Our job is to make memory memorable. Why would you not trust us.
Intelligence All right imagination I get your point. Sabbatical. Well done.
No comments:
Post a Comment