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Well, at this point, my writing experiment or, at least, the attempt to make it a daily practice is not going so well. I missed yesterday though I am not sure why. Something got in the way. I could do it easily, in terms of a daily practice, if I thought of what I am writing here as a diary—a daily record of events. But I set a higher bar for this experiment. I want what I write to have some sort of point beyond a mere detailing and recording of how many times I fart in a day (already done in obsessive detail by Samuel Beckett). Though, I must say, at this point I have no idea what the point of this entry might be except to detail and record my frustration. The idea of having a point would seem to assume that there is some larger point to everything that is. And I am not sure about that. What the larger point might be.

Perhaps things like the recent fire and the recent flood rocks the foundations of our daily lives, our stability. As long as things are stable we assume there is a point. But when things become unstable, we see through the cracks in the daily routine…and what do we see there. Nothing. All of which is a roundabout way of saying I am not getting my daily paper on time. Before the flood and fires my paper would arrive around 6. In any case, it would be there when I opened the front door. That is no longer the case. I open the door around 730 and there is nothing there but naked concrete.

Usually, when I looked out around 10, the paper is there. Some person has brought it and left it. So I do get the paper, but not when I want it. And this is upsetting. I have been getting this paper for over twenty years. Mostly, it appeared when it was supposed to over that time, surprisingly so in fact. But not now. I tried to contact the newspaper people about this problem, but I received some sort of generic reply about my contractor having been contacted that did not answer my question: “is the paper delayed because the freeway is closed?” I assume the answer to this question would be “yes” if I could ever find a person to answer it.

A Writing Experiment

Posted on January 15, 2018 by nicktingle — No Comments ↓

Well… I think I will try to devote a few minutes per day—20 or more—to writing something. I don’t know why I would bother to do this since I have nothing significant to say and have done or experienced nothing worth reporting. I continue to exist mostly, and perhaps, at 72 years of age, that is something to report. Not everybody lives till they are 72. I note in the daily obits that many people have failed to live till 72. Though I am not so sure that living to 72 means that one has been successful at anything. Except existing, that is.

So I continue to exist at least at the moment, though tomorrow I may not. Perhaps I could be doing something better with the little time I have remaining than this experiment with daily writing. But I am not sure what that would be. Eating? Well, that is always worth doing. But there’s a fixed limit to that. One cannot eat continually. Well, I suppose one could, and probably some people have, but I wouldn’t want to do it. And doing something else would probably require more energy than I have at the moment.

But the question remains, why should I expend the little energy I do have, when I could be taking a nap, on this writing experiment? I think a nap might be better. Maybe. Maybe not. But I have read things that suggest the elderly benefit from creative activity, like taking a class in water colors, or something to that effect. The theory appears to be that “creative” activity soothes the soul in some manner. And writing, at least in the past, has served me to some degree and in some instances (not all my any means) this function. The soothing or straightening out function, I mean.

I saw an ad for a book on this subject: the therapeutic effects, as it were, of neatening and straightening one’s stuff. I should read it. But I can’t remember where I saw the ad. In any case, I know what they mean. Neatening and straightening can make one feel an iota better. And at my age and in my current horrible condition, I am looking for iotas. An iota here and there, damn it, is what I need to get through the day. At the moment though I don’t have the energy or a sense of purpose sufficient for me to do an actual, in reality, straightening and neatening, as in, imagine: the garage.

That garage is an albatross around my neck. Every time I open that automatic door and look in, my heart contracts. Junk and crap about to tumble from overfull shelves. Twenty years of indecision and neglect all piled in one place. Overflowing with dust, and dirt, and grime. And I feel a kind of responsibility to clean that place up before I go. I mean I don’t want somebody else, probably my wife, to have to sort through that junk after I die as my brothers and I had to do through our parents crap: old clothes, napkins, pieces of metal, pictures and adult diapers.