always been (22/September/18)

they say one should never drive angry… I agree… but what about writing, should one write angry?… I’m angry, right now… or write now?… probably because I’m angry a lot these days; or have I always been like this?… it’s hard to look back without confabulating, cherry-picking either the worse or the best and neglecting the embarrassing, forgetting the inconvenient and burying psychoses.. I appear to have two settings, anger and numb, flip-flopping between the two through rather unsettling crossing points… there’s a lot to be angry about these days; or have they always been like this?… some say so, let it all out, they say, you’ll feel better…. they?… yes, the therapites, those who want to therapise you in submission, raze you to the ground, or hang you out with all your dirty laundry… and before you ask, yes, I reserve the right to invent words, commentators and politicians and fashionistas (i.e. the frivolous) get away with it every day……… and will you?… what?… let it all out?… will it make me feel better?… you can’t know for sure whatever the so-called precedents, and what if it wasn’t, what would be unleashed then?… they say holding it all in corrodes you inside out, even hollows you out… again, no one’s completely sure, it could be that releasing it into the wild like rats from a laboratory would only result in all kinds of unseen fallout… nuclear energy is kept inside the reactor for a good reason… yes I know, far too many analogies running amok here methinks… once the genie’s out of the bottle you can’t unknow, unsee, unhear, untouch what’s unravelled… then what about considered angry writing, or is anger beyond anything considered, a morphograph, a dilution or perhaps distillation of……… what I do know is driving angry = bad idea, whereas writing angry, well, just ensure there’s plenty of ink in the well………

© 2018 robert greig

punching above my wait (21/Sept/18)

waiting, waiting, I do a lot of waiting, waiting, we all do, even when you think you’re not you are, you’re joining the ranks of waiters, though not necessarily serving over-priced nouvelle cuisine to over-privileged customers… perhaps I should distinguish by inventing a new words, waitrels, as in ‘wastrel’ without the ‘s’, after all your wait could be nothing more than wasted time… in the back of one’s mind or the forefront of your thoughts always waiting, waiting… waiting is tiring, sometimes downright exhausting, definitely occasionally exasperating… waiting, waiting…for someone or something or some time in space to relieve you, let you go, let you breathe, release you from your cage but it invariably may be through to the next inevitable and inescapable wait… you’re waiting for this blog to end, I’m sure of it, waiting, waiting and wondering how and when, for the punchline, the upshot, the revelation, the twist in the tale, the point of it…… I’ll be kind and release you early by revealing now that there isn’t one and more than likely fizzle out into nothing more impressive than a damp squib, soggy, limp, unseemly… what I can’t promise you though or help with is that there won’t be another wait, not necessarily of my doing, waiting at the end or at least on the way, imminent, itself waiting, waiting to waitnap you into its waiting, waiting maw… so who will get there first I wonder… you or the wait?

© 2018 robert greig

wordless (17/Sept/18)

some days it’s as though my words are laughing at me, that not only do I hate, and have long done so, the sound of my own voice I sometimes take umbrage at the sight of my own words sprawling as they do across the page saying the same old same old, same old thing I said yesterday, the day before and before that stretching way back probably into some previous lives quilling papyrus or scratching on slate… it actually feels like all I’m doing is grunting at the page in vain hoping an anonymous inanimate strip of pulp can translate it into something verging on coherent… but there’s a disconnect, a loss of faith, it’s all just flakes of skin… but then, isn’t it a writers lot to write about a writers angst?… a duty, respect the words and they’ll do the same for you?… not easy surrounded by their misuse left, right (especially right) and centre, hardly surprising that words refuse to cooperate having finally said enough’s enough, I’m more than just 26 alphabetical fridge magnets… good grief, almost forgot how many letters there are in the English alphabet, isn’t that weird, or worrying, it simply hasn’t crossed my mind to specifically think about or remember it, but there it is, ingrained, five handfuls of letters plus one left over constantly playing musical chairs to decide which letter will be cast into the wilderness today, maybe it’ll be the least used which as it turns out is ‘q’ (though some may argue it’s ‘z’ which is third bottom but swaps places with ‘q’ in some measures) which is apparently found 56 times less than the most used being ‘e’, unless you decide on the basis of frequency at the beginning of words which relegates ‘e’ to around half way and puts ‘s’ proudly in the top spot, unsurprisingly ‘x’ wins the booby prize of bottom…… anyway, unsurprisingly I suppose I have lost my thread, where was I?… bemoaning something or other………

© 2018 robert greig