“Grub first then ethics.”

Bertoltd Brecht said that, in outright denial of the religious reminder: “Man does not live by bread alone.” Brecht was right; people can’t absorb much doctrine on an empty stomach.

I thought of his words this morning as I woke up with a firm resolve. BLOG FIRST. Blog first and then what? Well, almost first. I checked the daily digital news but more fleetingly than usual, and I checked my email - very little as the weekend begins. Wait till Monday. So it’s blog time. Blog before grub. Actually, I’ve had breakfast. I’m always hungry after my swim.

I had saved, as a reward for my patience and yours, a few file folders I had accumulated:, all labelled: “Ideas”, “Blogs”, “Seed Beds”, “Files” and “On an On and On, a veritable treasure trove of thoughts that I could pass on with commentary. Unfortunately. It’s now an hour later or longer , and I have just riffed through the first collection. It comprises mainly, reviews of books that I subsequently bought and read, intending to insert the review in the book it belonged to. That was easy and enjoyable. But I found a few reviews of books I never tracked down, and now I want to. I want to NOW. And I want to google them, one writer, in particular, but it’s almost noon, and I am getting hungry. (What’s that about grub?) Oh dear.

I came across a review of a book I didn’t get, The Information: A History. A Theory. A Flood. published in 2011, by James Gleick, illustrated, 526 pp, Pantheon Books, $29.95, and it sounds necessary. But there’s a cautionary quote from the reviewer ( Geoffrey Nunberg) in a sidebar:

“Even in the 17th century, people felt overwhelmed by what Leibniz called ‘the horrible mass of books.” Overwhelmed. Yes, we know what it means, but look again:

overwhelm verb [ with obj. ]

1 bury or drown beneath a huge mass of something, especially water: floodwaters overwhelmed hundreds of houses.

• give too much of something to; inundate: they were overwhelmed by farewell messages.

2 have a strong emotional effect on: I was overwhelmed with guilt.

3 defeat completely: [ with obj. and complement ] : the Irish side was overwhelmed 15–3 by Scotland.

• be too strong for; overpower: the Stilton doesn't overwhelm the flavour of the trout.

This, you see, is what I have been suffering from lately, as I wade through my files. How am I ever going to get my blogs in order? Let alone my files?

Maybe today is the day. I have to go to a annual meeting over lunch and I hvae to negotiate a new contract before the end of the day, but I’ll try. (I PUT OFF THE CONTRACT NEGOTIATION UNTIL NEXT WEEK.)

Stop the World!

Here I am and it’s still today. I’ve been trying to keep my private(?), busy life separate from my blog but the blog suffers. So do I - like, - I’m tired. I have a lot I want to think and talk about but I keep running out of energy. I was saying the other day to a friend, quoting Proust, I think, something that he said about Art. He said art is unforgiving, meaning that if you don’t (try to) create art, then you have failed. No excuses. That’s it. For whatever reason, however valid your excuse for not showing up that day to make a difference, then - nada.

Not that my blog is “ART”, for heaven’s sake, but I have made a commitment to it and the days I fail to deliver, as I have failed so frequently in the past several, then - nada. No apologies.

Well, maybe it doesn’t matter. I am just reading the final pages of Youval Harari’s book, Twenty-One Lessons for the Twenty-First Century, and he says that not much of anything I say or do or think or that you say or do or think is valid any more., or will be for much longer. Homo sapiens (that’s us) won’t be relevant much longer as algorithms take over the world for us.

Wow. So I missed a few days. I don’t think anyone missed me. Well, I actually, I did. I missed me. I remember a line that - oh dear, I don’t remember - or know? - who said it - but here it is: “How do I know what I think until I see what I say?” It has to be a writer who said that.

Discoveries every day. I looked it up and I got it right and it is well known, attributed to E.M.Forster (1879-1970 ) but not quite. And discovery is right. The sentence seems to be the catalyst for “discovery writing’, that is, finding out what you’re doing or what you mean as you go along, or after you’ve said it.

What did I say?