12 April 2006
Metrica, Manila
With four blogs I’ve vowed to maintain, I’m steeled in my resolve that from now on, weeks would never pass without any entry or at least fillers to them. There’s no heart-splintering to me than seeing my blogs in state of vacuity. Panic and paranoia it has been causing me; it is as if I’m bowing to the challenge of Stephen King who stated in his “On Writing” that “If God gives you something you can do, why in God’s name wouldn’t you do it?”
However, seldom can I finish articles. Most of them remain incomplete, already mottling with age in my frayed notebook. Although lots of ideas have been constantly playing in my head, I can hardly take up writing them again as I’m afraid I might not be able to put heart and soul and justice to them. Reading these unfinished writings is like watching Lorna Tolentino, they’re good yet they’re lacking of emotion.
Gone are the days when I’d just clack my keyboard and the words would fire off like wayward missiles. A cup of coffee or two, a pack of Marlboro and Nirvana or GnR or Indigo Girls on the background were all I needed before to weave words, enabling me to carry out a thousand-word article in three hours. Today, I have to pass through the ritual of plugging socket in my nose, wringing my brain until it bleeds and trickling buckets of sweat before I can produce a paragraph that can’t even make a single strand of hair raise.
As to what has caused my impasse is still a conundrum. Oftentimes, I point my finger at my overindulgence on coffee, coke and cigarette. Yet this could be because of the age, or dementia or anything that I could easily cite as a convincing alibi.
There are a lot of possibilities. Yet, while mulling over, words are just strutting in front of me, waiting to be picked up. They’re freely floating, waiting to be of service to make a story, a poem or an article ennoble the beauty and madness of life. That is the irony of it: they’re free but remain dormant unless you have the guts to use them. Your fear is that they would become less magical, less powerful or totally futile as soon as you employ them. You’re terrified at the thought of failing them. Because according to the British novelist Samuel Butler, the rule is “we have got to live with them and must make the best and not the worst of them.”
But no matter what, we have to live with the words. That is why, I’m firm that I would keep my four blogs. At least, through them, I’m in no doubt I’d be a good neighbor with words. The only thing is that I’ve to make use of them properly. Otherwise, I would produce nothing but a trash.
Metrica, Manila
With four blogs I’ve vowed to maintain, I’m steeled in my resolve that from now on, weeks would never pass without any entry or at least fillers to them. There’s no heart-splintering to me than seeing my blogs in state of vacuity. Panic and paranoia it has been causing me; it is as if I’m bowing to the challenge of Stephen King who stated in his “On Writing” that “If God gives you something you can do, why in God’s name wouldn’t you do it?”
However, seldom can I finish articles. Most of them remain incomplete, already mottling with age in my frayed notebook. Although lots of ideas have been constantly playing in my head, I can hardly take up writing them again as I’m afraid I might not be able to put heart and soul and justice to them. Reading these unfinished writings is like watching Lorna Tolentino, they’re good yet they’re lacking of emotion.
Gone are the days when I’d just clack my keyboard and the words would fire off like wayward missiles. A cup of coffee or two, a pack of Marlboro and Nirvana or GnR or Indigo Girls on the background were all I needed before to weave words, enabling me to carry out a thousand-word article in three hours. Today, I have to pass through the ritual of plugging socket in my nose, wringing my brain until it bleeds and trickling buckets of sweat before I can produce a paragraph that can’t even make a single strand of hair raise.
As to what has caused my impasse is still a conundrum. Oftentimes, I point my finger at my overindulgence on coffee, coke and cigarette. Yet this could be because of the age, or dementia or anything that I could easily cite as a convincing alibi.
There are a lot of possibilities. Yet, while mulling over, words are just strutting in front of me, waiting to be picked up. They’re freely floating, waiting to be of service to make a story, a poem or an article ennoble the beauty and madness of life. That is the irony of it: they’re free but remain dormant unless you have the guts to use them. Your fear is that they would become less magical, less powerful or totally futile as soon as you employ them. You’re terrified at the thought of failing them. Because according to the British novelist Samuel Butler, the rule is “we have got to live with them and must make the best and not the worst of them.”
But no matter what, we have to live with the words. That is why, I’m firm that I would keep my four blogs. At least, through them, I’m in no doubt I’d be a good neighbor with words. The only thing is that I’ve to make use of them properly. Otherwise, I would produce nothing but a trash.
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