1 post tagged “manuscription”
The words are gone. I wrote them and hated them and then they were gone. It's funny; I've been using words my whole life and I still can't quite get comfortable with them. It's one thing when you speak them; as soon as you utter them they're gone anyway. But the permanency of the written word...I am tempted to damn the man who invented the writing. I know he did it for the sake of keeping a list: two cantaloupes, a camel, eight amphorae of olive oil. Maybe it wasn't his fault.
It was the guy who used the invention to relate a story. Two men walked into a bar; the third man ducked and it knocked his hat off. Or whatever. But that man was the first who made possible the annoying condition, the paralysis of the mot juste. Words are as slippery and as common as minnows and if you have your heart set on capturing a particular one, you're sure to be disappointed. Writing for me is at least as much deletion as insertion; it's kind of like basketball, where you seem to be going backward at least half of the time, when the whole object of the pursuit is in front of you. If I'd just left in the deletions this entry would be done by now.
Maybe it is done, anyway. We write hammering on keys, and we have the capacity to give with one hand as we take away with another. If I was writing with a pen, dipping into the ink and scratching out lines on expensive paper, I'd probably be more considerate before I wrote. Writing had the rhythm of breathing, then: the thoughts were gathered together as the pen was dipped, and then released in a steady flow until the ink ran out. When you reached an impasse, you could always cut a new nib. Nowadays we're all pounding out the beat like Gene Krupa, and the melody is lost. We don't even get to ring the bell when we come to the end of the line.
The words are here, written, and they'll stay written, as soon as I press that little beige button.
