Another excerpt from my paper and pen diary:
21st Sep, 2004
Have started wearing my coat to go outside. It is definitely autumn.
Every time I read some more of The End of Nature, I fall into a terrible black mood. Today has been the same.
It also seems to me that I will never be published by a major publisher. In a sense reading the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook is just as depressing as The End of Nature. I seem to recall someone describing Burroughs as the last true writer; all that is left for us now are the career writers. Well, there are real writers left, it’s just that no one publishes them anymore. Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook, and other publications of its ilk, are now unashamedly geared towards the sickening crew of smug careerists.
All my dreams have come to nothing. I am growing old alone in a world that is ending. What is this if it is not a nightmare?
How can I care about anything now? I look out of my window at a cold and darkening world. No one comes to visit. The day ends soundlessly, and I am tired.
Death – yes, walking along by the river today I longed for death; the death of the ego that we are told is the end of suffering. What do I have left to lose? I am ready, but it does not come. No, I still have my life to live.
Alone by the window with my thoughts… At least I should let my thoughts run free. There is nothing else for me in the time I have been given. And if no one comes to keep me company, at least it means that no one will trouble themselves if my thoughts stray too far. I have only my own thoughts to answer to.
And if the darkness outside my window seems especially terrible, it is because, even in such quiet there is death. Nothing much is happening, but death is just beyond the glass. ‘Nothing much’ begins to assume its own kind of terror when you realise that is all that stands between you and death. Nothing much – my life this evening and all my life will ever be. But one day death will come. At least death will embrace me. At least death will deign to come into my heart.
I thank you very much. I have actually started work on the entry in question. God knows when it will actually be up on the blog, though. Well, bye for now.
Nice advice. But I think I’ll just have to finish this book with grit and determination. It is a very good book, actually. And it’s necessary research for me.
Your ‘monologue’, it seemed to me,
Lacked an ingredient – ‘brevity’.
It looked as if your writing skill
Was used to show us how you “thrill”
Yourself, your ego, artistically
By utlising – dramatically –
A self-made ‘prop’ which, while macabre,
Reminds one of “Les Miserables”
It’s clear you have an aptitude
For narrative, beyond the ‘rude’
Employment of plain noun and verb,
But if your ‘patron’ – the late Quentin –
Were around to read your writ
He might suggest you use some “wit”,
For no one, I suspect, much cares
For stories with depressive airs 🙂
Tempted as I am to try
To match your wit and versify,
I fear my version of the same
Would not add greatly to my fame.
If natural talents I possess,
Therewith my fellow being to bless,
They are talents not of wit
(Or not as most would notice it).
Are laughter, then, and talent one?
That most profound which is most fun?
Must talent, too, come easily,
As laughter does not come to me?
If there is mirth in what I do
It’s recognised by those few who
Have felt such pain as I, such as the damned
Do feel when in Hell’s gate their toes are jammed,
And this deep, everlasting pain
Does rise in spasms to their brain;
In madness do they laugh and cry;
In madness does my talent lie.:clown:
Hello Emily!
I am ‘at work’ – not geographically so much as philosophically – and listening to The French, not the entire nation, but the band of that nomenclature. I am under strict instructions to accept all compliments, so I shall attempt to do so graciously now, and say, thank you very much. You’re right as usual.
And hello Dr Lokutus Prime, if I may address you thus. Before such a foaming plunge-pool of rhyme I’m afraid I am speechless… But I wondered if you mind me doing a cut and paste of some of this exchange for the rhyming entry in this journal I threatened to post (and will post when the sting of the lash called ‘work’ is not so fierce upon my sweating back).
What do I know of suffering –
I have only lived three score years?
What do I know of depression
And its deepest valley of tears?
What do I know of darkness
(apart from its absence of light)?
What do I know of inturned thought
In the quietest hour of night?
What do I know of obsession
And refusal to move from a place
Where the comfort of misery covers one,
Providing a darker face?
What do I know of anything?
I know that we do not have long
To savour our life and experience,
But I cannot tell you you are wrong.
One makes one’s own personal ‘heaven’ or ‘hell’
But all of us can surmise
That if we do not fight our own ‘dragons’
It’s likely we shall not arise
To take everyday as we find it,
A mixture of laughter and sighs.
What more can I tell you to mitigate
The feelings which leave you
In such a low state?
~~Best wishes :)~~
Hello Q.,
What happened to that ‘cut & paste’,
Portent of your inimitable taste,
Which I assumed would soon appear
Among a group of ‘epithets’ here?
Did it get lost in some dark vale
Where ‘morbidity’ fills full the pail?
Or is it pending, in between
Much ‘grander projects’ in your scene?
Do tell, I beg, what happens next
To all our prose and rhyming text,
But spare me details if you have
Flushed all our banter down the lav.
~~lokutus-prime~~
Well, I’m afraid I’m not really up to verse this morning, so I’ll borrow someone else’s and hope it suffices:
Every morn and every night
Some are born to sweet delight
Some are born to sweet delight
Some are born to endless night.
Q.
Q-
Bravo! I liked the other one too! You’re so clever!
E
Some are born to sink or swim
Some are born to questioning -“Why/What/How/ did I get in…?”-
Some are born to suffering
Some regard this as ‘their thing’
Some are Ghandi, clothed in white
Some wish they were but want to fight
Some are gifted, some are not
Some forget what they have got
Some are inspired – and they Write 🙂
Some just Scribble through the night
Some bear sorrow on their back
Some hide joy in the smallest sack
Some write complex, clever, blogs 🙂
Some read them and admire these ‘logs’.
___________________________________________________________
Some say a ‘Superior entity’
Designed a system of entropy
With sentient life at the border
To encourage the rate of disorder.
Others are of the view that
Humanity emerged after
The system overloaded
And universally exploded.
Some even dare to say that
Everything is in decay
And will be consumed, eventually.
But no one knows if this will be
A random process or something
That happens sequentially.
Although we should make the best
Of our brief lives the real test
Is not always by Revolution
But, inevitably, through Evolution.
Stay all your ‘mazed contortions
‘Til my pen be broke,
And I have passed from rhymes
And workaday prose,
Or everything of which I spoke,
Into darker climes
Where, unapposed,
Sorrow wields a blade
Eager to destroy
Each verse I made.
Lift not your faltering hand to head
Unless its purpose is, instead,
To cup a glass of vintage wine,
Saluting all who bow to Time.
In consequence of blow to crown
Corporeally you hug the ground,
Wity but witless, mash’d in blend,
‘Til I lean down and whisper soft
“Arise now, my supine friend” 🙂
Hello. Just a quickie before I pop out. Nice verse. I’m actually planning to do a verse-like entry to my blog soon… when I get a moment.
Q.
Hello quentin – thank you for your crisp reply 🙂
Yes of course – By all means please do your proposed cut and paste. Best wishes 🙂
Hello…. something rather odd has happened.
I appear to be writing to you in prose. mmmm – doubtless it will pass and the ‘poetic’ side of my waning intellect will reassert it self. But while I have the opportunity to write sans verse, I had better say how impressive and remarkable your literary output is. Rational thought compels me to conclude that I am not alone in asserting this and, therefore, you must be as erudite as you seem to be 🙂 Good luck with the planned verse-like entry to your potential blog. I look forward to reading it.
~~lokutus-prime~~ 🙂
For some reason my reply to this comment appeared as the second comment in this string. Bizarre!
My lassitude contagious proves;
One versed in verse his verse removes,
And instead of this fine hose
Dons a trouser some call prose.
But to express my gratitude
My weary rhyme I once more ply,
Though it may look like platitdude
To the rude untutored eye.
And in salute I raise my hand
To this tortured brow
Wherein this totured rhyme was planned
And saluting, bow.
But since my hand does upward fly
As my head descends
I do a mischeif to my eye
And fall on my rear end.
My metred friend, let me dispell
To some extent, the fears you dwell
On; that my duties are forgotten
Indeed that would be truly rotten.
Your guess half true and half awry
That in a vale of darkness I
Do prosecute all of my schemes
Having there misplaced my dreams
It is the dark vale of Abaddon
Where I fight the curse of Adam
Hoping that some day I might
A chance receive, to breathe, and write.
(The quality of this verse is a reflection, I fear, of the state of glue that my brain has been reduced to. I’m not sure what the excuse for the quality of my previous verses is, mind you.)