Big Johnson and the Legendary But

A Brief Bio of Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784)

Dr. Samuel Johnson, by Joshua Reynolds (Wikipedia)

Dr. Samuel Johnson, the esteemed writer, critic, and lexicographer of the 1800s would hate me. Well, I like to think that we would get along pretty well, but he would certainly despise my writing. I'm partial to subtle puns, rhymes and alliterations, and circumlocution. Johnson didn't care for puns very much at all, and famously criticised writers who used a slew of words when one would do. He's one of the few, and first, to lay criticism on Shakespeare. He's famous for his Dictionary of the English Language (1755), in which he's compiled definitions of words based on how they were used previously and contemporarily. His famous collection of essays and opinions features what literati today refer to as The Johnson "But" or "Yet." Dr. Johnson frequently used these conjunctions to spin his arguments, giving an objective, two-sided view of the topic at hand. An excellent example, and darned-good read in general, is his collection of essays, The Rambler, which was published every Tuesday and Sunday from 1750 - 1752. Totally 208 short papers, the series covers, criticises, then defends everything from whores to procrastination. Check out, too, The Adventurer, a sister series based off Dr. Johnson's travels through Britain with Scottish author and contemporary, James Boswell. Like a good Englishmen, he drank good liquor. His greatest fear was poverty and, as he approached it, death. Apposite to his future, he was born above his father's bookstore in Lichfield, England. Today is his birthday.

Good Reads

Three Books I Can't Wait to Read

Airports. They captivate me. As a traveller, I feel as excited and oddly comfortable in a new airport as I do a new city. The more you travel through airports, the more you learn their inner workings and understand their unanimous geography (and the less you "hate to travel"). Ladies, the same may be said for you and malls. And just as ladies can intuitively find the Victoria Secret store (so can guys; the 15ft banner of a seductive supermodel in sexy underwear is a bit of give-away), so can the seasoned airport-navigator find his reprieve. For me, that's the book store. In my recent New Zealand layover, perusing titles in the non-fiction isle of one such reprieve, I came across three books that have made it to the top of my reading list. Thought I'd share them.

Bitter Days Ahead

Learning the Craft (beer that is)

Before I Begin...

I bitch a lot on this blog - particularly about things I can't stand, flaws prevalent in the human condition. I was going to start this entry (about something I L-O-V-E love) expressing hatred. I was going to start it off like this: "One thing I can't stand is bad beer." Instead, I'm going to feign cornucopian. Here we go.

A small assembly of the massive tap line at J.P. Henley's, St. Augustine, FL (photo: me)

Let Me Begin...

Paradocks and Matrices and Middlegroundlandia

When the fine line between adolescence and adulthood widens, blaze forth down the middle. Sirah and beer, Easy Mac and smoked clams.

Now, at twenty-five (25) years (yrs) old (opposite of young), I find myself torn, stuck, lodged – and also dislodged – confined, and nakedly exposed to middle-middle age. Car insurance didn't go down like I thought it would, sparking a tremorous fear that I'll be parsimoniously dissuaded from buying a Corvette during the incipient onset of my future mid-life crisis. 

(I'll probably end up purchasing a 2037 Prius – good God!) 

When I was younger, I despised the effects of ostentatious existence, indeed, of wealth itself. Then: money, money, money, baby! Now, I'm cloud-lofting back to, if not a simpler existence, a simpler mindset. Pure ideology. Pura Vida. 

(Which reminds me, I'm due to go rogue in Costa Rica sometime soon.)

I have two jobs: I'm a dock master at a small marina, where I wear flip-flops to work (not as cool as it sounds... really...); I'm an intern researching computer programming, coding, and designing at an advertising company, where I wear slacks and a custom-fitted collared shirt (cooler than it sounds... kinda). I'm making a matrix, and, in doing so, learning that The Matrix is far more accessible and enjoyable than developing a real one.

Life is a paradox.

With a beer in one hand, a Shiraz (Syrah) in the other, a box of Easy Mac, a shell of smoked Cajun clam, I am a contradiction. I am the middle of the road.

I like it like that.

Writer's Blockade

Hebetude - what a bitch. The lazy state a mind can fall into without the slightest notice or instigation. So little can provoke it, it's not just not-even-funny, it's scary. Mental hebetude, indeed, is the source of creative lacklustre: the source of writer's block, for us writers.

Combating hebetude is challenging endeavour, challenging, because it requires force drawn from within. In a blog post on Refraction Magazine, Allison Lloyd (writer, editor, web designer, S. Florida sunchild) manifests the secrets to re-igniting creative verve. One of her tips is exercise, the movement of blood and physical exertion being components to clearing your head and opening your mind to mental flow.

Jack London suggested going at creativity with a club. 

Simons (pronounced Simmons ("I'm a rare one-m Simons"), the enigmatic and precocious protagonist of Padgett Powell's novel  Edisto approaches prose by waking at four in the morning, brewing a cup of coffee and letting the oneiric pre-dawn stoke his creativity.

Acclaimed director, producer, writer of the iniquitous, Peter Kosminsky (White Oleander, The Promise, No Child of Mine), once expressed in the Rolling Stone, "Can't make the scene without caffeine").

I have to say, I employ all four. I like to wake on my own in the relative earliness (not quite the pre-dawn hours of Simons' way), brew a cup of coffee (black, no cream, no sugar. Strong.), and write something. Anything really, just so long as it helps the brewing of words and gets them nicely onto paper. If a creative streak catches, I'm writing for hours and hours on end. If not. A page, two, maybe. 

But I also make sure to do cool, creative, different things, making sure I don't get stuck in a predictable routine. Like painting. I'm not good, but I give it a go. And that helps me look at things in new ways. I try to exercise or exert body as much as possible, which has benefits beyond those of creative kindling. Though, I have to say, I'm currently in a rut: why this blog hasn't been updated since my spontaneous fucking-off to New York City. I've got a job I hate, and I'm stuck somewhere uninspiring for writing. I'm uninspired, but spurring myself to break it. It's happened before, it will happen again. It won't last long.

Fiction is coming...