8.22b

[I find myself increasingly turning to impressionistic word pictures that paint something unimaginably microscopic and invite the reader to explore on their own time or discard the work as worthless. But that word--"work"--is used wrongly. These take no work for me. I put no effort into writing them. I say nothing with their creation. I provide no answers. I fill no gaps. I'm not adding to humanity's sum total, I'm merely commenting on it.

That, I believe, is stagnation. America is filthy with it. Our incessant self-parody has come to a point where sometimes even "original" works are still parody. Mockumentaries and referential humor are so pervasive that they are sometimes used as the only crutch of an intellectual property.

Perhaps it's my energy levels since camp started--I have been feeling sluggish. Perhaps it's my attention span--I can't play one video game all the way through. Perhaps it's the drive for the work--I have no questions for the universe, so I have no reason to write. Perhaps I just had a lapse. I do that, sometimes. I think I'm allowed.

All this aside, the one thing I must not allow myself is the luxury of ease. Socrates is widely respected for his rhetorical method of asking questions to advance a conversation. But take careful note: Jesus is respected for his astute answers to real-life questions. When I stop adding to the conversation, I am only (I must repeat stringently--ONLY) obfuscating someone else who is doing actual good.]

I pick up the typewriter from the desk and trudge the twelve miles to the sea in the pouring rain. The Atlantic blows back in my face as I set the machine down on a log. Salt water tears whip past my face and I spool a new sheet into the slot prepared for it. Crack your knuckles, sir, and begin to type. Can I claim to know what I'm typing any longer? The ribbon is so old that it slips into a wet goo as it is stripped from itself in the pulley. My slapping at the keys produces nothing but small, irregular holes in the paper. I take pleasure in the roar of the surf, the stinging slap of fat water drops, the mechanical absolutism of the typewriter keys, and the next round bell of every return. I take so much joy in the small things, but the writing has become unimportant to me now.