Showing posts with label quote. Show all posts
Showing posts with label quote. Show all posts

§24. The Happenstance of Writers

In **Ars Longa, Vita Brevis**, Lewis Laphalm declares:

Writers happen by accident, not by design.

Lewis omits the possibility of designing accidents.

Bukowski looks like a good instance of an accident by design.

See for instance So You Want to Be a Writer?

§31. Bruce Lee On Method

Any technique, however worthy and desirable, becomes a disease when the mind is obsessed with it.

§60. Alan Perlis on Editing

Editing is a rewording activity.
[Alan Perlis]

Sounding Like This

This very blog is an experiment. The object is to write about method without being obvious. I would like to express myself somehow like this :

Narrow-Minded

My knowledge is limited, my mind puny. I tried hard, I studied, I read many books. And nothing. In my home books spill from the shelves, they lie in piles on furniture, on the floor, barring the passage from room to room. I cannot, of course, read them all, yet my wolfish eyes constantly crave new titles. In truth, my feeling of limitation is not permanent. Only from time to time an awareness flares of how narrow our imagination is, as if the bones of our skull were too thick and did not allow the mind to get hold of what should be its domain. I should know everything that's happening at this moment, at every point on the earth. I should be able to penetrate the thoughts of my contemporaries and of people who lived a few generations ago, and two thousand and eight thousand years ago. I should, so what?

[Czeslaw Milosz, **Road-Side Dog**]


Nine sentences into one paragraph. One paragraph around a narrow topic, yet a poem with an impressive depth. Poetry written as prose. A simple idea which resonate with all its seriousness towards infinity.

Maybe I should do a pastiche. Maybe not today. Maybe I already did.