WRITE THIS WHILE YOU CAN
By Charles E. Kraus
There is a "2016 To Do" list on my office bulletin board, several lists really — to do, titles of books I wish to read, people I need to contact; also:
WRITE THIS WHILE YOU CAN
Beneath the heading we find several topics I might yet tackle.
1. The Reduction of Writer Friends From My Generational Queue. The demise of
aging friends, ultimately, of me. Too grim? I’ll explore this once I am dead, an entirely
new perspective, death as seen from the point-of-view of a participant.
2. Rereading and Reevaluating — that’s a subject I might get to in 2016. How over and over again, when returning to an old favorite, some book or film I admired back in my collective past, I am disappointed — by the work, by my having been attracted to the work, and/or for having spent years as a propagandist urging others to appreciate the wonders I now reject. Did you know that Holden became a CPA? That the Chicago Seven opened a restaurant? That when I first saw A Thousand Clowns, Murray was my hero, and that when I last saw it, I cried for his deficiencies? It is impossible to reread without considering the fate of the author. Bellow lasted too long and went to the other side of reason. Salinger became a paranoid bully. Kerouac took the wrong road.
3. My Involvement In the War gets listed as two separate writing projects -- fiction and memoir. Probably I should stick to the facts as I misremember them. I was distracted when I signed the enlistment papers. If I finally write it down, will I learn why I took the alternative route?
WRITE THIS WHILE YOU CAN is my reminder. Whatever the topic, Charles, do some serious writing while you are still able to string words. Before stringing involves beads. Thoughts used to jump around in my head, colliding, fighting for superior position, making the cut, surviving an edit or two, ending up on a final draft. Currently, my musings resist symbolic representation. Words no longer compete; they acquiesce. Before my impressions get shipped off to a back burner in subsets of subsets of my mind, while they continue to be accessible, if only with great effort, dangled into consciousness on a quick peek, short term, lend lease basis, I’d like to send them into the game.
Samuel Clemens dictated reminisces long after his inner-editor ceased to function.
That’s a perfectly good way to ruin a reputation. And yet, there are, there were, there are, new
combinations I want to add to the cumulative count.
