Of making books there is no end -- Ecclesiastes
I really don't have time for this. Or maybe I do...
Entering the basement "office" has become a dreaded routine; the piles of crap, mostly newspapers, clog the place. It is almost impossible to turn around, let alone walk from end of end of its thee linear rooms without gingerly traversing hurdles of newsprint, magazines, books, two storage-hassocks of old LPs...
Somewhere in my rational brain I have plans to renovate the three rooms, indeed I started the renovations soon after moving into the old bungalow in 1988, ripping out the weird/ancient pulpboard walls with a mind to putting in new drywall. The actual drywall, maybe 18 sheets of it (I could go over and count, but it would be a precarious stretch over two stacks of newspapers in the middle room where computer and I sit), this drywall, incriminatingly dated 1990, leans patiently on the exposed 2X2s along with a few sheets of plywood, making a mockery of my hard belief that I am not just a talker, but a doer. Hey, family stuff overpowered me! (that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it).
Waking this Sunday morning without three or four priority jobs screaming in my ear (although yesterday's lawn-raking of our large yard needs to be completed, and there is only an hour or two until the morning dog-walk) I fire up the old 2005 Dell desktop, determined to write something. The topic is not a problem. I have been primarily a critic since H. L. Mencken blasted through my brain circa 1975, and inspiration is as close as the nearest Atlantic or Globe and Mail. You can see where the problem starts, perhaps...?
Truth be told, my cognizance of the long-accumulating paper-jam has triggered a sort of initial immune-response, namely that being a clever chap I will not just clean up the mess but kill two birds with one brainstorm by writing a massively popular and profitable bestseller about the clean-up, sort of like that book The Know-It-All, by the guy who reads the entire Encyclopedia Britannica from beginning to end, shooting off witty asides regarding this entry or that as he reads them. I'd look up the author's name, but my copy is, naturally, lost somewhere. And I'm still a bit of a conscientious objector to Google.
Speaking of lost items, the title of my whiz-bang bestseller (many years in the brain-pan) is also lost in this jetsam, although I recollect it as being rather tentative. Its best part, a sarcastic jibe about "how to lower awareness" is of course unforgettable.
As the computer slowly comes to life, I hit the "Remind me later" button for the 33rd time on the Adobe Flash update (which I fear would be a death-blow, just as the update from AOL 7 to AOL 9 was a near-death experience for our 1998 Dell) my brain is percolating nicely, and I rejig the title as How to Remove Media and Lower Awareness. Good enough for now, until the original title emerges from the paper-drifts....
But 2+ hours later, I'm overdue for walking the dog, and haven't even tackled an irritating book-review clipping I found atop the heap of newspapers that had to be removed from my typing-chair. Barely time for a quick edit of Chapter 1 here...
