My Trilemma~: Writing, Speed-reading and Brimming Minds

[~Note: Trilemma. As in Dilemma. And by extension, tri-. Each ‘unilemma’ enumerated below. Get it?]

Let me come right out and admit. I’ve been lax in updating my blog. I’ve even tried to fudge some reality in my last, lame post. The one about the newbie writer’s life and my good wife. Truth is, I’ve been laid low by a trilemma, an especially enervating version of writer’s block.

Do I know when it all began? No. All I know is that it’s right now surging to a terrific climax. Soon. As of now, I’m currently swimming in the robust body of it. Beware as you venture forth.

Cicero once said something to this effect: say what you want to say, but just so; beware that your extra words will spill over an already brimming mind.

He may have been too right, as my current trauma will prove. I’m become an oriental orientated to occidental ordeals, riddled with strange visions. Cicero style. Oh, read on.

Apparition (1)

I first discovered it a fortnight back, when one of my friends asked me what I thought of the latest English movie in town. Never being one to succumb to brevity when I can manage it, I was ten energetic and hardly elaborate minutes into the review. Then I casually glanced at him mid review. What do I see? He has an odd expression – dazed, or rapt, perhaps – and for a split, mad second, he looks like an undomesticated Rastafarian, swaying to some mind numbing music only he could hear. Hair on my arms stood on end.

Then I shook my head and my eyes watered immediately. I broke off and we went to a café for tea. My friend looked normal, of course and relieved for some odd reason. Topic during tea was weather and other routine matters. We parted soon after with no mention of the movie or the review or my maddening, frightening hallucination. I desperately hoped it was the pre-monsoon heat gone to my head.

Then I drive away to the net parlour, log on to the net and some pointless browsing… lo! I find Mr. Cicero’s quote. Ringing in the gory synchronicity in all its sinister splendour. Surreal, no less.

Those dreadlocks… what if they were my own words falling off the side of my friend’s brimming head? [shudder] Poor guy. Poor ME!

Affliction (2)

If I’ve been caught between a rock and a hard place, my tremens – as I discovered above – is exceedingly delirious. And here’s the hard place – a three headed hydra I’ve been throwing biscuits at, unwittingly cajoling it - ‘puss, puss, here kitty, kitty’. In my case, the beast has reared each ugly head in slow demonic grace. Savour each champing and malicious head as I paint the petrifying picture for you.

I wonder if other newbie writers are caught in the same, tight bind – finding it easy to be frivolous and excruciating to be frugal.

I wonder if it’s healthy, or even right, that for a newbie like me I sense many ideas out there and much to write about. But I refrain because I need more close knowledge. And then I can’t figure out the exact limits of it to either avoid pedantry or deliver the appropriate authenticity and control over subject.

I wonder about the impasse over style, length and the integrity of the idea. So I just end up in froth over it all, because to even sort this sorry mess out I’ll have to fight my own laziness. And then to squeeze my professional time further, which is low paying anyway.

Juice in the rind, anyone? Yup, I didn’t think so.

Avoidance

Oh, what opened this hideous can of worms in all its debilitating details was this one particular story draft of mine that I laid out a month or so back. After six rewrites and endless frustration, I realized that for the story to come right out and out right, so many things have to go, well, right. Truth be told, it will have to be done in complete spite of all. Some mid-wifery, this. Just got my goat, you know, goatee and all! So I took the spite’s way out.* but I have realized that I’m not to have rest or redemption.

[* Mail author for useful, short do-it-yourself Good-Riddance-Guide to handle annoying writing drafts and similar frustrations. Works with drafts on any subject - author testimonial. Certain pre-conditions necessary for satisfaction. Needs immense will power, but peace of mind guaranteed. No charges.]

Let me present the third trauma of mine this way – the rock: check, the hard place: check and here: the cracking cliff shelf I’m now scrabbling desperately on. A mixed metaphor, I know. But then I have no luxury to ease in the choicest, I just have to grab at all straws blowing in the wind.

Angst

I realize, looking for ideas is like a languid, pleasurable walk in your private garden – in cool shade one summer noon – musing at the low hung, blushing mangoes. After I finish licking my fingers of the sweet stickiness, I look up to see unusual and rich gossamer around me, fragile, shimmering, colours delicately blending in the gentle breeze. All I have to do is to just choose, pluck from thin air and begin weaving. Colour, strength, design and meaning are just waiting to emerge in arresting confluence, it seems.

But I find that actually launching into writing an essay or story is like navigating stormy night seas on a frail boat. The wind’s rent my sail, my oars are almost soggy, my toe’s plugging a hole in the bottom and well, in this situation it’s a non sequitur: the fact that I can’t swim.

Aggravation (3)

It’s like the issue over sub-vocalizing (9) in speed-reading courses, the last but not the least of my present troubles. While reading and comprehending quickly does appeal to a writer-learning-to-be, it has precipitated a peculiar existential trauma in my case. This last resort, so to speak, has denied me recourse to relief and release. Be warned, o novice speed readers.

You don’t know you have this self-defeating tendency, and have been happily coasting – stumbling, more like – along when suddenly you find out you are actually suffering because of it. And you realize that your entire reading life has been below potential. Take that.

Then comes the knock-out blow: you’ve got to re-train yourself with reading faster. But this cure is worse than the disease, God. Trust me, I’ve tried. It’s terrible; all at once, you’ve become this millstone around your own neck, watching, assessing, inquiring yourself if you’re vocalizing - and you’ve just overnight become a relentless self interrogator. All this, while you read. Takes the fun out of it, you know.

Oh, Aristotle did say a man’s full of contradictions and selves or some such thing, but… Blast! He never let on that I would end up waking an eternal nagging voice in my head, for sanity’s sake! I'm now beyond psychiatric succour.

Agony

Now I can’t enjoy my favourites anymore! Brian Greene, Amartya Sen, Belinder Dhanoa, John Le Carre, G.G. Marquez or even my own consulting and research documents and reports. I’ve become a nervous wreck from trying to SHUSH this voice in my head now.

It’s a veritable Frankenstein’s monster, refusing to go away now that it’s hatched. These new age learning methods are nothing but primitive, thinly disguised, vile black magic. Add to it the brimming heads I’ve begun to spot. Cicero’s advice, speed-reading and the writer’s block. Imagine solar system my way – a cowering little sun [me] in the centre and three slavering monster planets circling him into a terrible trap, inexorably moving in vicious, centripetal anticipation. Brrrr!

My social life has gone to bits. I can’t visit libraries for fear of endangering librarians’ livelihood. I can’t read or write in peace. I’ve been ushered unceremoniously out of film theatres already. Worst of all, my clients are counter-counseling me! I play pathetic hide and seek with my suspicious wife. It won’t last long. I’m faced with either self-imposed exile, without any attendant fame to boot, or socially sanctioned asylum. What have I perpetrated on myself!

Ignorance does really tend to bliss. Ah woe.

Where was I? Oh yes. Writing’s a double edged dagger. Serrated. Dipped in poison. Oiled hilt. Riveted with tiny, sharp spikes. And a sizzling grip… ok! You get the point. Right.

Alleviation

Ah, I also realize that writing is as much saying as withholding. It is in equal parts revealing and concealing. Good writing is supposed to illuminate space, till then in complete darkness, and to bring into sharp relief that which is worth seeing, or deemed by the writer so.

It is also to provide crisp, clean edges to the subject in focus – who or what ever that may be – so to suggest shadowed other sides from which it withdraws with tact, by design, through deliberate omission. To nuance is to layer, texture and acknowledge dimension.

To fling typefied lingo at you – show and tell, just as well.

Good writing naturally accords respect, empathy and freedom to the reader to paint her own mental landscape, lighted by her imagination and guided by her emotional compass. It is a beautiful contract that is fulfilled automatically to all round satisfaction, if the writer is committed his writing.

Abandonment

To lay bare is to bore, loudly crowding out the reader, to refuse room for her intelligence. On the other hand, one cannot constrict expression in the name of precision. Then there would be no meat, nothing to masticate, leave alone to relish, regurgitate and remember.

The challenge and goal is balance.

I also realize this. Every so often, I seem to strike sublime poise on the slippery edge of ability, just about, there… but I begin to totter in a minute. I flail wildly, grasp haplessly, and keel over awkwardly. Ooooo-er!

I plunge headlong and helpless into excess.

Overdone adverbs mock me on the way down. Wheeeee.

Archetypal Authorial Anguish

There. Quite a beast, eh?
My very own trilemma, in its elaborate explication. You see… uh!
Ah, well. My eyes are watering again…

Guess you are all topped up now. [sigh]

A Newbie Writer’s Life

A writer’s life is not easy. Inspite of being just a newbie, I can see that the practice of this demanding art can be, well, demanding. Let me prove to you why: something happened last night while I was seriously at work on my PC.

I was having a bout of the mood obscure that newbie writers get into quite often: free-floating ideas. At first glance, these have neither clarity nor context for a story or an essay. But they need to be recorded – so I’ve learnt – because hidden meanings could reveal themselves later and inspire your writing.

Oddly I had about three such ideas pop into my head in the last hour. With their buzzing growing frantic, I decided to put them down for record to exercise them soon. This was the last one, which I had just finished typing…

The Extra Long tail of technology benefits.
Modern day physicists would have you know that digital timekeeping is a sophisticated technological advance in scientific progress. It’s led into sub-atomic and sub-nuclear clocks offering astounding accuracy and amazing applications in high-tech physics.

As a common man, I commend science and its fruits that I enjoy in my life. Why, I’m personally very satisfied with the little plastic digital clock I bought a week ago. It’s quite nicely replaced the spring clock by my bedside, which I would surely have smashed one of these days. What with writing late nights and being a light sleeper, I need peace and quiet.

But I’ve discovered something no scientist has as yet. A sort of Tao of all the physics behind it. With a digital clock, man is now able to muffle time’s inexorable march. Rid of ticking, he’s no more aggravated by its nerve wracking progress and the constant reminder that every passing moment, one more quantum of his life has been spent irretrievably. Existential logic flowers in silence, I can testify –

And then I started clapping. Inspite of myself.

My wife, who was puttering about in the kitchen, peeped around the hallway with a cynical expression.

“Hey, post it on your blog first??!”

She’s not exactly derisive towards my writing, but she’s not overflowing with love and encouragement to a budding artist, either.

Oh, she’s always known my interest in literature. When she found out I was planning to try my hand at writing, she was quite thrilled and supportive. At first. Now as I’ve started gathering literary momentum, I find she’s become quite inventive with excuses to avoid reading my blog. I feel it’s something to do with my personal philosophies and sophistication of expression.

So, back to my applause. I became so upset with her question that I refused to speak to her. At breakfast today morning, she claimed I had muttered and exclaimed to myself all the while I was at my PC last night.

She joked that I’ve become narcissistic, although I know quite well I don’t suffer such self-delusions. Of course, I do believe in my growing literary genius; it’s a mere matter of time. Well, I just maintained a stoic silence though she kept teasing me about it. Recognizing true art is beyond most people, I thought.

Anyway, I have no mood to tell her, any time ever, that I was only chasing mosquitoes last night. It’s going to be a tough life, I can see that.

Oh, me? Oh, my! - 2.0

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

Oh, me? Oh, my!

Laugh out loud! Hee haw, snort!
Inquisitive ole me just got slammed with this quiz.
It kinda sorts your responses to its odd ball queries, and presents a totally weird and unsorted persona, you.

Curiosity killed this cat, right-oh!
[I gotta remember to read this book first!!!]

You're A Prayer for Owen Meany!

by John Irving

Despite humble and perhaps literally small beginnings, you inspire faith in almost everyone you know. You are an agent of higher powers, and you manifest this fact in mysterious and loud ways. A sense of destiny pervades your every waking moment, and you prepare with great detail for destiny fulfilled. When you speak, IT SOUNDS LIKE THIS!


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Waking early on a summer morning.

Life is a rowdy train charging into the horizon towards unknown destiny. I’m an awe-struck freight. Passions jostling in me, I thrill as I wonder who’s engineering this juggernaut, to what futures. I’ve spent fitful fistfulls of time, drifting in and out of awareness for a few past hours overlaid and muffled with the cool, dark velvet of night that had flooded in from without. I look out of the window and see that the world outside is unmapped country, blurring past me and lightening gradually. I breathe in deeply the chill morning air that is glad and rousting about afresh in my bay.

In an hour, I think I’ll hear the final cymbal clash of a risen summer sun fiercely reborn.

Away!

Ah!

A welcome hiatus
from my omnibus
of rants errant,
of regard scant.

Readers mine,
go on, shine.
Breathe and smile
this short, sweet while.

Off with me, then,
to a little holiday.
Oh, where? Back when?
Heh, Would I say!

The blasted heck of blogging

Statutory Warning: Angst may be harmful to collective consciousness.

Managing this blog layout's beyond poor ole me.
I might as well try to chew hot rolled steel.

If readers aren't going to be smug and bug me about my blush, I'll just flashback here.

About a month or three back, I found a couple of nicely designed blogs with curiously compelling fonts and colours. And human nature being what is it, the grass on the otherside felt a little greener, a bit more luscious with a slightly richer, stronger tang to the mown. My mind immediately made its customary leap, and feverishly imagined running proudly a journal likewise. So I hurriedly identified a small post I'd made to trial with, and reposted it with no wee glee.

Looked good, YAY. But then the beta was no betta!

For when I tried to change it back to the earlier font, no go. It just didn't. Ah, I thought, must have overlooked some small parameter, heh. So you know what I did? I tested the font change with a couple of bigger posts, my novice mind ignoring the insistent peal of the warning bells.

Breath baited, then I tried to change them back to the earlier font. Now the faint peal of tin (warning bell, oh you know!) was an awful iron din. They seemed stuck, wedded doggedly to the new font; I felt like I'd violated something sacrosanct.

I even tried over the weekend, creating pseudo-posts, making quasi changes, and faking reposts quickly before the blogging software could recover from the last one.

What's worse, I created more new blogs just to check this compelling, buggering phenomenon. Although, I insist it's pretty irrelevant here that I couldn't gather enough courage to try it with them. I really do.

At any rate, I ended up feeling like a particularly low sort of a repeat violator, of a blog's dignity, like. I couldn't reply to some kindly readers of my blog, nor look in the mirror. I couldn't control my compulsive logging and my obsessive rechecking. To fail is to ail with no avail.

Awright, I'm a flying doodah if I know what that means, but can't you just empathize!

So I fell back on my last, final, ultimate resort: the mystical. What I did was this, (my very own Blog Correctional Manifesto) :

1. start new day with positive attitude; power up PC and whistle nice tune.
2. ensure ergonomics - arm rest, check, straight back, check, monitor level, check.
3. focus: no trade-offs between calls of blog and nature.
4. take break every 45 minutes, walk, breathe, loosen up carpal, shoulder, neck.
5. remember: regularly practise mystical practice.
6. pay no regard to screaming banshee of urge to just... just log in, even once.
7. utterly abstain thus for one whole week.

The weekend would come with attendant distractions and go leaving a host of little chores in its wake for me to take care of. And then... STAND BY.

It's noon, Monday. I am stoic, aware of the now poor, bedraggled temptation peering over my shoulder, following my navigation of information on the PC and the net. Till now, I've managed to keep it at bay inspite of its rather heavy, rather warm sighs on my neck.

SUDDENLY...And I mean real, hyper suddenly, ok?

my fingers lunge over the keyboard,
calling up my blog,
login with lighning fast taps,
race the mouse to the 'Edit Posts' link,
couple of rapid clicks to change the font back in the errant post,
and a strong daub at the 'Publish' key.
One single cursor leap to 'View Blog' and my hope is sky rocketing.......

Hopeless.

Well, imitability can lead to irritability, I've learnt.

Even meditation
(Yes! So? I did that!
That was my mystical secret, of course!
What would you do... eh? Hrrrmphh!)
with abstinence doesn't make up for the mysterious shortfall in consummation; there's always that, some such little itsy bit of a detail that always escapes the eye.

Oh well, WYSI hardly WYG, so to say. or more like, WYWINWYM. (What You Want Is NOT What You Can Manage). Huh.

Now all I've ended up with is some posts in the girdle (middle) of this blog with one distinct font, and at the neck and feet - a totally different one. Go look, you'll see what I'm talking about. (sniff!) Ah well. Might as well learn to live with it, take both smooth and rough, learn soft/ not rough, let it go/ hellward ho, stop and cease/ be at peace/ learn to eat/ rotten peas ... and all that rot.

Am I too proud to seek expert help? Or am I too bashful over what seems quite silly - decidedly inconsequential - or a needlessly beguiling complication or... or well, - by a long, improbably long shot, I concede - quite simple.

Not trivializing Nietzsche or other such effective regurgitators of reason, rationale and rapacious sagacity... but I do wonder sometimes now if true misery is after all the mother of maudlin compromise with technology. I mean, Kafka, Orwell, Gibson, Stephenson & Co. weren't just doodling idly, you know. There is something alarming about this growing virtual intelligence, with overly sophisticated technology, much bandied killer app programs and computing complexity around us and our children that, I'm convinced, should place us squarely in the circle of chaos in future. May sound like a defeatist's conspiracy theory. Being a hapless, self nominated victim, it's not that I subscribe to it or that I don't, but I do! Er...

Well, it's with no light heart that I say that I hardly scroll down my own blog nowadays. It's like - in the middle of a popular play on stage, the protagonist suddenly spots two sniggering, nudging viewers in the front row and develops an irrepressible suspicion if his fly's come open.

Well, talk of being a martyr. You are reading about one, for sure. The play does go on, has to; might as well enjoy the breeze.

Gah!

Micro Review: Blood Diamond

Rating (out of 5 stars) * *

An issue-based thriller with a weak story, Blood Diamond is almost good. Mind you, no more.

A white diamond smuggler (DiCaprio) and an innocent black fisherman (Hounsou) join reluctantly together - with opposing moral and psychological motivations – in civil war-ravaged Sierra Leone (late 90’s Africa). They are on a violent crusade to find a pink diamond in a race against death and brutal, warring government and rebel troops that covet it too. The background is unethical international gem trade, terrible reality of child-soldiers and slave labour in a poor, brutally ravaged continent.

The film boasts of above par action sequences and a remarkable performance from Leonardo DiCaprio. But the screenplay is an over-done advocate for your conscience. Good first half, heavy second. Thanks to the disappointing stereotype of a sermonizing American journalist (an attractive but wasted Jennifer Connelly) helping the smuggler find nobility in the midst of moral chaos.