I like things to be pieced together well, particularly my own writing. I know when I'm satisfied with my Writ: words may seem strewn but I knew my purpose in scattering them, yes there was a blueprint for the chaos, method in the madness. I'm no Dostoevsky, but I know when I've got it down the way I wanted to.
Unfortunately, as I think I have explained quite sufficiently in the previous post (and even in this post), there is sometimes no time to be so thorough and so careful with it. No - I should correct the latter part of that statement: I think I have realized that I am so careful always - even when I force myself to spin out the words and throw caution - and the words themselves - to the wind...well, how uncanny, I find that I have imperceptibly been fitting those same words with tiny paper wings so that when launched, they would have a safe glide home. I've been doing it even now.
But I think that other part was right: sometimes, you just can't be so thorough. That's what held me down in the lab - I was being too meticulous, I was taking too much time. I was doubting my own precision. You know what? I was doubting that I could do it right the first time.
I've decided that, to stop me from falling back into the trap of procrastination, I'm going to write fragments. Yes in the other post, I resolved to write something at least a couple of times a week, and if I can that's great, but that's not the issue. What I need to do is get myself to write when I have something I feel needs to be written. I need to get it down when it comes, and then expand it, or else I'll probably never write it. Now, I may not get others to read those clipped thoughts, but I ought to write them for my own sake.
Of course I've come to this conclusion before. I think I've even posted some of those fragments here. I guess I just wanted a preamble.
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Fragment 1
Some statistics sink in deeper than others. You can hear 10 statistics in one news segment or read 20 in one article, and chances are that the odd one or two will embed themselves into your long term memory, the others you will forget tomorrow. For me it was the statistic: " 3 out of 4 Iraqis are without clean water" (BBC news broadcast, yesterday).Immediately, my mind converted the ratio into a fraction into a mental picture: 3 out of 4, three quarters, three quarters, that's 75%, that's you me and the kid next door, minus the girl down the lane. Clean water. To wash your hands with. To drink. To wash yourself with. Murky water in rusted pots to put on your face and clean your child with.
...
In the midst of this post (see ellipses), I go to the BBC website to make sure of the statistic, since I don't like regurgitating anything unvalidated. Hmm, is that part of my thoroughness - that I don't like posting without sources? How interesting; reflexive writing.In any case, I find what I believe to be the html page based on the broadcast (here: Iraq faces alarming humanitarian crisis, by David Loyn, Jul.29th). And the statistic is from a July Oxfam briefing report: "Rising to the humanitarian challenge in Iraq." So I really had a Statistic, not a perception, and it really could be validated.
The Oxfam report said 70% of Iraqis had an "inadequate" water supply and 80% of Iraqis "lack effective sanitation." I guess BBC put two and two together. At the end of this passage, I feel no better, rather worse - the sanitation statistic did the trick - though there was a brief glow at discovering I was not mistaken and this was credible. Which meant I had a right to feel that initial surprise, feel pity and sadness, feel indignant. Which meant there was a chance that I could get someone else to feel some of that too, because of the truth of it. So that the next time they saw a statistic, they would know what to do: imagine.
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I was going to write other fragments but I really did drag this out and I really am tired.