Skip to primary content

A Little Bit Stupid | Aug 08 2000

I had this notion to create a monthly online journal, each issue of which would include various pieces on a single topic, all written and/or edited by me. This seemed like a good idea at the time, which unfortunately many bad ideas do, so I started working on the first issue (topic: lies) only to discover what an enormous pain it would be to produce a new issue each month, at which point I did what any marginally sensible person would do: I abandoned ship. However, before hitting the water, I did manage to finish three short pieces – My Bio, Kinda; The Black Knight; and Insanity – the latter of which was actually written for the second issue (topic: insanity), but which might, if one turns the thing sideways and squints, fit into the first.

Only of course there isn’t going to be any first issue because as I said I gave up that regrettable idea. Instead I have a new regrettable idea. It is a daily journal/report thing devoted to lies, more or less, since lies, more or less, are what really interest me. (I say this imagining that, one, it wouldn’t really be a daily journal report thing, since as it turns out I have to work and write other things and do laundry and stuff; and two, that I would no doubt end up writing about other things besides lies, since no one can write about the same damn subject over and over, even when that subject is as compelling to a person as the subject of lies is to me.)

Would you enjoy reading such a daily journal/report thing? Would I enjoy writing a daily, or nearly daily, journal/report thing? Right now I’m thinking there’s a chance that at least one of us would enjoy these things at least a little, although at the same time I wonder if I am not having yet another regrettable idea. Time will tell, but in any case I feel an obligation to my future self, the one who is old and dying, to do potentially stupid things, since as Pushkin says, poetry has to be a little bit stupid, and I want the geezer I will become to feel his life had some poetry to it.