V e r i t a s . S o p h i a . I u s t i t i a

I really don't get how people can work from home. I can't. I cannot work bare-foot, clad in a crumpled tee-shirt and boxers with my bed tempting me hither. I guess I'm a pretty site-specific, time-specific person. I can only work in my work place. I've long ago stopped taking work home at the end of the day because I know I won't get any of it done once I slump into bed. Likewise, the quality of my work takes a sharp dip during the holidays. It's like there is a clear division in my head- there is a place and time for work and a place and time for un-work, and while the spirit is willing, the flesh is weak. Actually, the spirit isn't willing either; it's just we're expected to turn up for work on some days are handed projects during the hols and I am such an unholy mess I shock myself. I can barely keep myself awake during meetings, I feign illness and then end up really sick (I am that good a method actor) and it pains me to see the shite I am handing in cos I know on a regular workday, there's no way in hell I'd allow any sloppiness in my work. Good grief, let the new year begin. Herald in 2008, Term 1, Week 1, Day 1! Get me into my brand-new office wear (God bless Boxing Day sales) and let me at 'em! My first movie of 2008 will be Across the Universe, a Beatles-inspired musical that sounds very quirky, and my first book will be Iris Murdoch's The Black Prince, which so far is offering up gems on every page (that said, I'm only on page 20).

Goals for the New Year: Kick ass at work. Work on my poker face. Always look impeccable, put some effort into my personal grooming and carriage cos when you look good, you feel good. Fashion is good for the soul, so says Ugly Betty. I'll try to believe it. Do not stay beyond five at the office. Keep up the reading. Lose weight. Spend less money (seriously). Learn to drive. Strike that. Even I'm not fooled.

I think about this style of writing I have adopted in my posts- the stream-of-consciousness, the references that make no sense to anyone but myself, the punctuation (as anyone who knows me well will attest, I am a stickler for good punctuation)- and I wonder if I really am using this blog to slowly return to writing again or if I've conveniently trapped myself, made a comfy little nest even, in cryptic prose, hoping that the less sense can be made of it by readers, the less apparent it will be that I can no longer write. If that is the case, I have been attempting to deceive everyone, including myself. I justify the "ramblings" as a natural flow of jumbled and confused feelings emerging from the mind as words and sentences- if I can call them such- unedited, but what if I can no longer tell it as it is, write prose as prose and not attempt prosaic poems or poetic prose, but just write, simply and in plain English, and engage a reader? I am terrified that these posts I have been writing have only worked to lull me into a false catharsis from my inertia- how many years now has it been- and only prodded me into a darker, more deceptive wilderness.

I shall be called for soon. Know this- I went there again today, twice actually, and both times I didn't know what exactly I was looking for, only how I should find it, by the mark of the golden stamp. German. And finding thus by your method, it seemed the core of my being was pierced by a blunt instrument to bethink myself eights years back when first you introduced me, a novice then and still, to find that marking.

Parallel lines of markings upon a page, print so perfectly aligned; I was born of the sun and have felt its fire upon this body, burned beyond recognition beyond sense beyond thought so beautiful was it, thus bewitched, I watched and waited and it cauterized

A solid crust still hot within

sunlight, daylight, sunshine, light, warmth, beams.

giddy with sunbathing, puerile and guarded so in one piece, unhurt
yet not invulnerable. second degree burns are all that are left

and they bring me not a step closer to the fountainhead.

How people do sleep in on Sundays. I am a man of routine; I wake at seven without aid of any calls or bells. I envy those whose minds seem able to sense somehow that they can linger in their dreamy wonderlands for another three hours on a Sunday morning.

War and Peace is not an easy read, by which I do not mean it is a difficult novel in the way Ulysses or Gravity's Rainbow is. Like them, it is a big book, physically, but it is straight-forward enough, and this translation, by Pevear and Volokhonsky, makes the going even easier with its elegance and clarity (the decision to keep French dialogue in French, with translations in the footnotes, is especially valuable in understanding the mood of the times, and the characters' personalities).

I've been told Garcia Marquez kept his Russian classics in the outhouse. Now there is a clever man. It's impossible to read War and Peace otherwise! To bring it out is like carrying a brick. Henceforth, it will remain at home, and I will read a few chapters each night. In the meantime, I shall read a shorter book in the day.

(amendment: Garcia Marquez kept Ulysses in the toilet, not Tolstoy.)

Jazz, in this interminably mind-numbing humdrum school holiday is like a sweet pomade for the mind, a succor in this barren dust bowl.

"Give me what you have that will take away the actual pain of existence."

"Good grief, I hate to say this, especially to a paying customer, but that is surely the most laughable cliche a self-pitying fool has spouted in my presence."

"But sir, you have no need to pity yourself.

- you do?

- Every reason.

"You are a narcissist, that's all. Save me the stories of your former glory, your broken dreams, your hopes that have in the brittle light of day turned to pillars of salt."

- Now, what will you have?