5. Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem.

I have a problem.   (curse that infernal love)

But before I can go into that, I have another problem to share with you: 

In the true spirit of taking a step backwards, even describing the first problem is problematic. 

I have a third problem: without resolving the first problem, I feel unable to write here, in this 'blog', at all.

And yet, here I am.  Writing in this blog.   At all.   How so? Very cunningly, I can assure you.  You see, as well as a propensity for taking a step back, I also have a humble capacity for thinking ahead.  In truth the problem has been, if not resolved, then at the very least tamed.  I have a moral duty - for reasons that will doubtless remain obscure to all but myself - to explain the solution to this problem.  But not just yet.  In the meantime, I'm forced to write in a style of arrogance and ill-conceived self importance.  A style, I hasten to add, which is entirely only half founded.  

We have taken our steps backwards, you and I ('when the evening is spread out against the sky'), and now, to balance the equation I have taken a giant leap forward.  What you now read before you is the future.  The New Me.  I stand at the finishing line of life, still fresh from the race, and thumbing my nose at the asthmatic bundles of flesh who lay scattered in my wake.  

This tells us two things:

1) My arrogance, if left unchecked, knows no bounds (unless accompanied by an equal number of leaps), and 

2) I shall forever remain as charmless as the day I was born.

On reflection, (1) is really just a subset of (2), which leaves us with (3).  Did I not mention (3)?

3)  If this is the future, then prey God the future can be changed.

In a moment, I'll leap back into the present, with the rest of you (we'll both just have to learn to cope.   Or you could stop reading.   Please don't).  I'll jump into a present me for whom arrogance is only a treacley veil over the elephantine well of insecurity and mixed metaphors, and not simply a God-given right, like the me of the future erroneously believes.

But don't worry:  forewarned is forearmed (so, a little below the elbow, then).

Knowing what I now know, and with a little luck - and Al - on my side, maybe I can still set right what once went wrong.

Oh, Boy!

4b (same day)

Things die.  It's a simple matter of fact that things die, and thoughts are things of a kind.  All those thoughts that flower and bloom and then fade, without ever having been uttered aloud (or, uh, you know:   plucked).  It seems a shame (so says the natural hoarder in me), and maybe it is, but that's not to say that all thoughts should be uttered, never mind recorded for posterity (pressed flat in the pages of a  -... you know what?  I'm going to give that metaphor a rest now, I think).  However, I have been pacing the room after writing my last entry, and thinking, and it seems sad that what I was thinking may be lost, even as the thoughts slip away from me now, this very moment.  There's the crux.  The conceited, self-important crux.

I was reading a book, in which a character described the sorry state of affairs when ennui is thought of as the 'healthy norm'.  While I was reading this a thought entered into my head (not so much popping as sidling), and lingered there for a page or two before leaving.  By the start of the next chapter I had forgotten what the thought actually was, remembering only that it had to do with writing.  It was in the attempt to retrace my steps (via rereading the pages I'd just read, and indulging in word association) that I arrived at the thoughts and ideas in the last blog entry.  But I'm not sure these thoughts were the same as the thought I'd had when initially reading.  So again I retraced my steps, and again ended up with the conclusion that writing and thought are to some extent the same.  Not identical, of course, but that...  Well, I've already covered this.

Pacing the room, I extemporised on the subject at length, and with great eloquence, to a nonexistent audience.  

Is it vanity after all?

I once heard blogging, amateur poetry and prose, and such like, summarised in these terms: 'Here are the contents of my head:  Raaaaaaaaaarrrrggghh!'

It's true, but it's perhaps also vanity and hypocrisy to assume that only the skilled have a right to express themselves. 

I may have come to the conclusion that writing and thinking are intrinsically linked, but by no means do I feel everyone else agrees with me.  The self importance of emptying the contents of your head into the public domain.  Well, here I am, attempting a crude transcription of thoughts I had barely ten minutes ago.  A crude transcription which, by its nature, is in opposition to my new understanding of my writing as being more than mere transcription.  The transcription is here, nonetheless, and certainly crude, as my memory fails me.  Suffice to say (it really doesn't, but I am forced to pretend), that in the thinking of something more than mere transcription, I was led via such thoughts towards a desire to transcribe.  The essence of the transcription is gone, I think.  The flow certainly is.  But let me say (and how are you going to stop me?), that things die; that thoughts left unspoken (or unwritten) are no less valuable, though far lonelier, than the last recorded full stop.

Should thoughts, by mere virtue of being thoughts, be preserved?  

No, of course not, but only if the thought is preserved can we ascertain if it is worth keeping.

Thoughts are floaty light, and even the greatest idea can drift away if it remains... if it remains... {transcript at this point becomes unreadable}

4a. Writing and Thinking, Writing and Thinking

This is working backwards, but:

The answer is that, to an extent, writing is thinking.

The question is, why, why, why can I use writing as a means to explore the validity of writing?  Why should I write a blog to discover whether one should write a blog, for example?  Because the writing is an expression of thought, beyond mere transcription of mind.

Writing matters to me, and I seek to justify it, and until I do justify it, I feel unable to write.  It seems a hypocrisy to write to discover that truth, but the hypocrisy is not there.

The reader is a lie.  I don't write for vanity; I write for clarity.

The reader is the truth.  Without the reader in mind, the thoughts swirl but never escape.

My thoughts are my own, and I share them, the better to keep them.

Jokes. (A digression)

Ok, here's a quick one for you:

14u