...

I have writer's block. Which in itself is such a revoltingly clichéd phrase that it more or less makes the point for me. Is there much better? I'm muse-damned. Extinguished by banality.

It is immensely frustrating, on more than one level. The first, the most and the worst is that when I sit down to entertain myself for an hour or two, there is nothing. Like the oldest sailor, who in search of excitement and vivacity seeks out with exulted abandon: "Here Be Dragons!" - and finds there only placid water. I have nothing with which to grapple, no ideas to try and carve.

The second frustration is that when such a muzzling enforces itself, if the world presents me with a circumstance undeserved, a judgement that wounds or an argument propped up by prejudice, it finds me helpless and unarmed, subject to the whim of whichever blow unkind providence bestows. Cathartic release is denied.

Words can be manipulated so easily. The almost infinite variations of our language never cease to inspire and amaze. Vicissitudes, cupidity, transitivity and shun. Fuck. Momentous, incenses, isomophic, 'ere begun. Illumination, confrontation, conflagration, all in crumbs.

It was slow/It drifted slowly/A quiet progress/Like the march of a continent/Taking an eon to move a second/Time could not hear its gentle tread/It weren't fast, mate/As quick as the sun/As speedy as my dead granny/Outpaced by an iceberg/Just lost to the tortoise. Ad infinitum.

Ceteris paribus, ignoratio elenchi, quid quo pro. Vice versa, cogito ergo sum. Quid custodiet ipsos custodes. QUA.

Don't they all sound delightful? A caress, both oral and aural. But without the ideas, the substance, they're just daytime TV. The ear and the eye are kept entertained, and upstairs it's a quiet and lonely place.

This is, to use the parlance of our times, really fucking pissing me off.