Sunday, April 14, 2013

Secret 1

1. Writing is hard work

Well, typing is hard work. I don’t like typing. I particularly despise any letter I have to type with the little finger of my left hand. And I find sometimes double clicking on an icon on my desktop that allows me to write can be excruciating. But since I can do that with my pointer finger that’s less physical and more emotional. Likewise if I’m going to be writing in my spiral notebook retrieving my spiral notebook can be a pretty hard-core chore, like an afternoon of ditch digging condensed into 7 seconds. I dug ditches, so I know what I’m talking about. It Was On Kibbutz Yahel in the early 80s. That is in Israel. Not the 80s but the Kibbutz. Me and Jay worked together digging a very big ditch in sand for a tough, wiry Israeli who was distinctly unimpressed with the amount of work we got done. Jay had curly hair and was a bit dodgy just in general but he certainly seemed to me to be a reasonably diligent shoveler. We smoked a lot of hash once we figured out how to acquire it and got so drunk one night on cheap wine that I could not remember what happened that night. The funny thing is that 30 years later I can remember very few things that happened on any given night back then and so now the one night I cannot remember is one of the nights I remember the best. In fact, I’m pretty sure a lot of stray evening events from that time have just drifted over to conveniently have happened on that night.

What does this have to do with writing? Well, it is writing. Was it hard work? No, it was more like an accident that happened while I was planning to do the excruciatingly hard work of writing. Was anyone hurt in this accident? Only you can say.

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