A CACHE OF THINGS TO BLOG ABOUT

While I was still in the Philippines and doing a column for this national publication, my editor gave me a precious piece of advice which, like most truths, endures all the elements of the moment, all the tests of time. The advice was pretty simple; in fact it was this simplicity that engenders our snobbish writers' noses to develop further attitude to ignore it: mental block is a writer's worst enemy and the only way to give it a good fight is to be prepared up front; preparing up front means establishing a reservoir, a bank, a fund, a cache of topics that the writer may have to write now or in the future; and, establishing a reservoir is commonly achieved by jotting down interesting things seen, heard, felt and experienced where, from there, the development of the interest comes easy, and becomes easygoing.

John d' Agata, gifted editor of the book The Next American Essay, made sure his writer's nose was not snobbish and came prepared - up front - to face the harshness not of the future but of the present, and prepared not only to write but to do, and so in the anthologies' final pages this heading makes up for his own Preparation H...

Epilogue: Things To Do Today

The things he were to do that day were one short of a hundred, but they can even be fifty short of a hundred, mind you, and my mind would still have been blown the same old-fashioned way, slowly but surely. Of the ninety-nine, fourteen were my choices, not choices for him or to whoever to really do and accomplish the things committed to be done, but choices for the way they have been arrogantly thought about. Arrogant because they blew my mind, arrogant because they put on published paper the evidence that blew my mind. My choices:

10. organize and dispense an imperceptible the
11. perfect the ground
19. determine the cause of the cause
30. make a list of things to do in case of consenting adults
48. refuse to pay the suggested amount
53. clarify a morning posture
58. postpone, for as long as possible, moving in to the sentence that is never not under construction
66. confine the untoward
75. rehabilitate the truth tellers
77. practice saying something
81. lance and drain the churches
82. define the decease
87. mimic the open area
93. weep new syllables

At this juncture I will not abuse the style - bless your heart Jetardi for saying that once - but I will show that world that Be Prepared is also the code of this old Blog Scout, yes, sir! no sir! (Hokay, as you were.) And so I came up with these...

Things To Blog About, Now Or In The Future, Till Blogging Is Easy, And The Mind Is Hard To Get:

1. james joyce freakin' finnegan's wake
2. my love affair with the river
3. cbs' slammed book
4. love, actually
5. do i care about quentin?
6. a 4:00 am experience with marcel proust's remembrance of things past and myers' cavatina
7. the kingdom of this world, damn you sir alejo, why are you so good
8. of libraries and museums, an a.g.o. experience
9. an attempt, a sorrowful attempt, to translate the sublime poetry of jetardi and jobertvi and bellena and freuda and angela from the english to the portuguese, even if the use of the article the is offensive to my ear, even if these authors did not authorize me to make the translation which i cannot possibly accomplish anyway, let keik be darned! darned.
10. i remember larry sipin
11. i should really halt this bloggin' feelin', cause right now i'm proficiently drunkin...

hik