When my friend was working on his master's thesis, he hung a postcard of Brando-as-Kurtz on his dorm-room door. The first vocal balloon he pinned to "Kurtz" read, "The torpor! The torpor!"
I'm feeling some of that, right now. I suspect it's just my unconscious way of assuming the T'ai Chi "first position" and bracing myself for the onslaught of the holidays, but I'm bothered by it nonetheless. I'd rather be a flurry of inspired activity. In fact, inspired escapist activity is exactly what the doctor is ordering.
Inspiration, however, is proving difficult to find. The closest I'm coming to it right now is perusing the pages of The Atlas of Literature, edited by Malcolm Bradbury. It's a prettily rendered, and frequently impressive atlas that does a tidy job of summing up geographical and historical conditions behind some of literature's great moments. We start with Dante's Worlds and Chaucer's England, and gradually move to Kafka's Prague and James Joyce's Dublin, before timidly concluding with the Fantasywallas of Bombay and the Glascow of Gray and Kelman. There's plenty of juicy stuff in between: right now I'm savoring Mark Twain's Mississippi.
Still and all, I'd rather be penning bohemian rhapsodies of my own. I'm a considerate, if not open-minded fellow. If you've got a reliable source of inspiration (preferably one that doesn't land you in rehab), let's hear it.
4 comments:
...assuming the T'ai Chi "first position"
A question from the peanut gallery.
For the holidays, do you feel most comfortable operating under the auspices of some sort of schedule? You know, planned visitations of relatives and acquaintances mixed in with the drop-by spontaneity of friends and favorite relatives.
Or, does a randomness of socializing weave its way through each day, bringing both a combination of excitement and dread into each passing hour. Not knowing what's happening next and worse, not knowing if an almost certain time-flows-like-molasses visit from a person will occur. The threat of a social Sargasso Sea.
A social disaster would be o.k., grist for your blogging mill when reflected upon later in the comfort of a bodacious sherry (and you have to have a sherry glass for this; it truly changes the taste). But a stagnant situation where conversation plods in a oozy slug trail of inanities? No wonder drink, suicide, and cursing all bump up at this time of the year.
To answer our ending question, for grist for the blogging mill in times of fallow thoughts, I always seine the usual blogging suspects. There's always something there to delight me and insprire me. Now, whether I actually write something immediately is another matter. Personally, I seem to blog better when it's dark outside, whether it's nighttime or just a heavy overcast day. When it's snowing, I seem to perk up. I love snow, whether it's falling or if it's simply lying. So, what with the minimal snow conditions down here in Delaware, inspiratrion may lay in the obtention of snow-blowing equipment. Now if I could only keep the outside temp at 25 degrees, I'd be a blogging machine.
If all else fails, a 3/4 filled sherry glass will do. Love the single malts that you and Mr. Xenosphere have commented on back and forth. But for me, sherry's the trick.
During the holidays, I feel the most comfortable operating in my kitchen. Give me a stocked fridge, a sharp knife, a gas stove and a crowd to ply with drinks and food, and I'll be at my happiest. I might even converse cheerfully. On the other hand: put me in a plush chair in a room full of people who are searching for subject matter (politics and religion being appropriately taboo) and deny me libations (both our families are tee-totalers), and my mood will steadily sour.
I suspect it is high time to introduce sherry to the mix. Until the advent of the new Millennium, I'd always thought of sherry as something that came with a screw-top, and left an unsatisfactory aftertaste. When the clock turned 2K, a friend uncorked a fabulously aged sherry that utterly transformed my entire concept of that drink. Yes, sherry might be just the thing this year.
Sherry? Is that anything like Mad Dog 20/20?
"Mad Dog 20/20"? Boy, I dunno - methinks that could be my ticket to rehab, right there.
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