Warm Recollections #19
More from the Bitz Files
As introduced here, these Warm Recollections are random cullings from thirty years of notes files…
Of course you want to be a good parent. But children don’t always want to be a good child.
Those farts which smell less biological than industrial: imbued with a mineral or metallic tang, as if wafting across flat marshland from a moderately-sized factory of unknown purpose.
Creative inspiration is like a surfer’s wave: you can’t make it happen, but you do have to paddle out to where it’s likely to break.
I don’t buy into this “So and so would have been sixty today” or “Today would have been their anniversary” thing. One of the most salient facts about someone is that they’re dead, and the point at which they died. So “my mother would have been eighty five today”… She’s not. She never got past sixty three, and now she’s dead and not accruing any more facts, that’s a defining characteristic. To talk about a woman who “would have been” eighty five is to pay lip service to a version of my mother that never existed, and I prefer to stick with the one that did.
Ah, the things you learn as you get older. Unfortunately, always just a little too late.
As always, if you can think of anyone who might enjoy this Substack, please spread the word.
Totally agree on the “heavenly birthday” and associated annual bullcrap. Do people “live” to be 120 because someone on earth gives them an annual increment after they’re dead?! People live, and then they die, and they are remembered by those who knew them. They had their run, and that is their story, and they don’t get a do-over. And neither do you.
Regarding creative ideas: it's important, when writing a story, to recognize when you've ridden that wave as far as it's going to take you, and trying to exceed that will result in you tumbling around in a jumble of gravel and broken shells.
Now I need to unwrite a lot of stuff. Dammit.