Hiatus, block, malady, misery

Even by my own hesitant blogging rate, I have hit a lean patch. In cricketing parlance, I suffer from a lack of form. My concentration and desire to write have got less and less recently, I am not scoring at all. It is not for want of trying or thinking of doing so, it is that there is a genuine block. Now, I should not take myself seriously and believe that I am a genuine writer and so on, for I have constantly strived to remind myself of what blatant dilettantism I am capable of. And sometimes one forgets to notice this, gives in to crass hypocrisy and so on again.

Yet this time, I do actually want to write something, for I am not tired of blogging as I do not consider it as a chore. In fact, everything else I do is, apart from caffeine and nicotine. I have always hesitated to rant, I do not want to tell the very few people who read this blog of how much coffee I drink and I do not go asking people their nationalities after reading them sympathize about Palestine. I also do not rant about how prejudiced you are, you have something against western writers, why criticise someone, anyone who dares criticise European writers makes you head itch, some such crap. Yet, I am even incapable now of ranting, as you can see. I had once dared to question Thomas Bernhard and his style, and what do I get......a self proclaimed great British blogger literally questioning my right to do so. And that after his cut and paste blog.

I must have been mad to volunteer to co-write the Proust blog with Antonia and Alok, my favourite blog writers. There too, I have gone dry, the runs have stopped, I am clearly leg-before. I wanted to write regularly and have been so dismal there. So, my dear Alok and Antonia, try keeping me in your team but if I am dropped, I will not question it.

My blog co-writer, who calls himself alpha2omega, had warned me of this phenomena last year, calling blog writing intellectual masturbation. Now, I still disagree, for we each will go into different graves, but I think he is right when he suggested that I might actually be tired of blog psychology, a sign of late capitalism! Ha! Perhaps, reading the rants of other bloggers has made me really anorexic, I mean in a writing sense, for who is interested in being told what one should think or write or read, so long as one has the right, admittedly self acquired of criticising what you and I write, but not at the cost of being told that stay off so and so, they are great writers, that kind of crap. There is too much mutual backscratching here in the blog world and some people excel in being members of a mutual admiration society of bloggers!

Once Alok advised me to read only what I wanted to. The advice is great but the projection in the blog world is great even for me to understand and succumb to, as evidence this naive post!

I do want to write again, but not repeat what I wrote the last few times, 2 absolutely hopeless poems, and one listless review of Bacacay. Give me poetry, I pray!
I will continue to read the unreadable books I have recently bought, including Ecrits and Dabashi. But, I find reading too boring at present, the likes of Arendt, with her myopic blind spot towards less civilised races like the Arabs of Palestine, too nauseating. I must read good old stories, and start reading Russian literature again. The intellectual world, I mean the genuine one is largely composed of Comprador intellectuals, those who are being paid to think and instigate wars. Those whose dull ignorance smacks of arrogant vacuity. Thus, we need more of the really great literature and not hatred and messianism disguised as travelogues and philosophy. Or even literature.

That said, even a holiday recently has not helped my batting slump ( I am always a batsman) and perhaps I must go again to Tangiers, and not avoid the cheapest cafes. That is where the waves and the bread and the sun and the nicotine gurgle and shine together. I want to go into the heart of poetry.