If It Had A Name

If it had a name — but, thank goodness, it’s beyond all that.

Epigraph, Chapter 14, Middlemarch:

Follows here the strict receipt
For that sauce to dainty meat,
Named Idleness, which many eat
By preference, and call it sweet:
First watch for morsels, like a hound,
Mix well with buffets, stir them round
With good thick oil of flatteries,
And fresh with mean self-lauding lies.
Serve warm: the vessels you must choose
To keep it in are dead men’s shoes.

Writing about what I plan to do today doesn’t mean I will live to do it. And waiting to write about it until after it’s done doesn’t mean I will live to write about it. So the best thing I can do is live, and leave it at that. Bless them, that’s where words come in; for somehow, they will find out of their own accord.

Living in the present, and the perils of authorship, especially as pertains to easy, unwarranted praise and the judgment of one’s own abilities: — Read The Rambler, Numb. 2. Saturday, March 24, 1750, by Samuel Johnson.

September 10, 2023.

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