Dear reader,
I should, I suppose, issue some sort of apology to you concerning my failure to post anything of note (anything at all, really) for well over two months. Not that I was suffering from a dearth of material - there was plenty to write about. It was simply a matter of distilling it into prose; and, quite honestly, I was a bit apathetic. Apathy is not conducive to good writing. You can write, certainly, but you cannot write well, you cannot write clearly, lucidly.
Writing clearly is hard even for the most diligent of writers. There are, of course, those moments when the words fall quickly into their proper place, when they fit together like so many puzzle pieces. You sit back and marvel at the rightness of it all, at your own supreme literary mastery. The next paragraph is usually crap. In fact, most of my paragraphs are crap (no comments please). I feel sometimes as if Syntax has marshaled all its forces and arrayed itself in formation, readying itself to summarily slaughter my feeble, shuddering ideas. Sometimes words just written seem to leer their own inadequacy at me. Solution? Don't try to duke it out with syntax. You will lose. But losing isn't so bad - try winning, it's awful.
Winning, historically, is actually a fairly dangerous proposition, and strangely so. Winning is fun, obviously, and a great deal of pleasure is inherent in the whole idea of being victorious. Sometimes you get money, or become famous, or become revered even: one need simply look at Nelson after Trafalgar, Washington after Yorktown, Grant after Appomattox, Wellington after Waterloo. Spoils or no, you still get to rub your opponent's nose in the dirt. And whichever way it comes - being better, smarter, stronger, faster, or dumb-luckier - it's fun to wallow in victory. But therein lies a danger: complacency, for consolidated power often seems like invincible power to the wielder of that selfsame power.
On the flip side of complacency is a chest-pounding ambition that "o'erleaps itself". But examples of that are plentiful enough, I need not expound.
Sometimes, though, the danger isn't complacency or ambition: it's fatigue. Take, for example, the First Battle of Manassas (Bull Run to you Northerners). The Southern forces had won thanks to the arrival of a somewhat tardy Confederate brigade - the Union forces, scared spitless, had hightailed it back to Washington. Disorganized, shocked by the intensity of the fighting, startled into a recognition that war is in fact a real, cruel, bloody thing with no stirring soundtrack, the Confederate forces made no move once the Federals were routed. Thomas Jackson, however, that day benighted with his nom de guerre "Stonewall", pleaded for permission to pursue the Union army and, hopefully, attack them in a stunned and disordered Washington. His request was refused repeatedly by equally stunned Southern commanders whose dreams of quick, bloodless triumph in the name of States' Rights and Southern Belles seemed quashed. They were worn out. Examples of such victory-fatigue abound: Grant after Shiloh, McClellan after Antietam, Meade after Gettysburg. Each time the victorious army hung back, plainly tired.
There is yet one more danger in victory: the frightening realization of your own power to destroy.
Yours,
Mr. Windsor
P.S. Rooibus
I should, I suppose, issue some sort of apology to you concerning my failure to post anything of note (anything at all, really) for well over two months. Not that I was suffering from a dearth of material - there was plenty to write about. It was simply a matter of distilling it into prose; and, quite honestly, I was a bit apathetic. Apathy is not conducive to good writing. You can write, certainly, but you cannot write well, you cannot write clearly, lucidly.
Writing clearly is hard even for the most diligent of writers. There are, of course, those moments when the words fall quickly into their proper place, when they fit together like so many puzzle pieces. You sit back and marvel at the rightness of it all, at your own supreme literary mastery. The next paragraph is usually crap. In fact, most of my paragraphs are crap (no comments please). I feel sometimes as if Syntax has marshaled all its forces and arrayed itself in formation, readying itself to summarily slaughter my feeble, shuddering ideas. Sometimes words just written seem to leer their own inadequacy at me. Solution? Don't try to duke it out with syntax. You will lose. But losing isn't so bad - try winning, it's awful.
Winning, historically, is actually a fairly dangerous proposition, and strangely so. Winning is fun, obviously, and a great deal of pleasure is inherent in the whole idea of being victorious. Sometimes you get money, or become famous, or become revered even: one need simply look at Nelson after Trafalgar, Washington after Yorktown, Grant after Appomattox, Wellington after Waterloo. Spoils or no, you still get to rub your opponent's nose in the dirt. And whichever way it comes - being better, smarter, stronger, faster, or dumb-luckier - it's fun to wallow in victory. But therein lies a danger: complacency, for consolidated power often seems like invincible power to the wielder of that selfsame power.
On the flip side of complacency is a chest-pounding ambition that "o'erleaps itself". But examples of that are plentiful enough, I need not expound.
Sometimes, though, the danger isn't complacency or ambition: it's fatigue. Take, for example, the First Battle of Manassas (Bull Run to you Northerners). The Southern forces had won thanks to the arrival of a somewhat tardy Confederate brigade - the Union forces, scared spitless, had hightailed it back to Washington. Disorganized, shocked by the intensity of the fighting, startled into a recognition that war is in fact a real, cruel, bloody thing with no stirring soundtrack, the Confederate forces made no move once the Federals were routed. Thomas Jackson, however, that day benighted with his nom de guerre "Stonewall", pleaded for permission to pursue the Union army and, hopefully, attack them in a stunned and disordered Washington. His request was refused repeatedly by equally stunned Southern commanders whose dreams of quick, bloodless triumph in the name of States' Rights and Southern Belles seemed quashed. They were worn out. Examples of such victory-fatigue abound: Grant after Shiloh, McClellan after Antietam, Meade after Gettysburg. Each time the victorious army hung back, plainly tired.
There is yet one more danger in victory: the frightening realization of your own power to destroy.
Yours,
Mr. Windsor
P.S. Rooibus
