I’ve now started and stopped three different pieces for today’s commentary.
The juices are not flowing.
I originally wanted to take a look at “Best of Lists” (inspired by a recent Amazon top 100 SF/Fantasy works) that took issue with the superficial nature of such things. That bogged down over research.
Then I started a bit about collecting (which I do) that tried to examine the differences – if any – between collecting and materialism. I didn’t like where the conclusions were taking me and would have had to devote too much energy to twisting them around to where I wanted them to go.
Then I decided to take a look at the fascistic rhetoric surrounding events in Syria in particular and the Middle East in general. The thrust of my argument was that direct military involvement by the US will be disastrous if we keep on playing this “war at a distance” game. The “Homeland” has to know that it could be seeing US servicemen subjected to horrific acts of barbarism on the news on a daily basis. Such a thing could cause us to withdraw from engagement at the worst possible time, or it could lead to horrific acts of barbarism here in the heartland. If the US is going to go to war successfully, it needs to do so the way we engaged during World War II: everyone involved, everyone resolved, a mass effort with everyone sharing the costs. Note that this is not a recommendation, only a prescription for success.
But that subject was both too mundane and too depressing for me to be able to finish the piece up.
So instead I’m going to do what any writer ought to do at moments like these. I’m not going to force myself. Instead, I’m going to take hands away from the keyboard and seek inspiration – by heading to the basement and finishing up sorting through the materialistic accumulation of five decades of stuff. It’s an internal war here, one between the forces of packratism and sensibility (not to mention the hard realities of limited space), but it is a war I intend to win by throwing everything I have at it.
Till next week.
Featured image from www.thecasualoptimist.com
