My blog posting rate is diminishing. It’s not that I have nothing to say. On the contrary, words and phrases tumble around inside me like lottery balls in a drum. My problem is getting the words to form sensible phrases and then converting them into something intelligible.
My typing skills are failing. A short paragraph now takes me three times longer than it used to because I’m committing so many errors needing to be corrected as I proceed. Too many times I find myself forced to retrace my metaphorical steps and retype a word, or check a spelling, or even amend grammar. I try to type slower but inexorably my speed increases and with it the incidence of error. Fingers will not hit the right key, or more likely I hit two keys at once and interpose an unwanted character into an otherwise perfect construction
The order of letters sometimes defeats me. I type the word “disestablishmentarianism” and it comes out “disestaboishmenttarianism.” Another problem is I forget what I’ve typed, so I’ll preview what I’ve written and see that I’ve used the word “nice” repeatedly in one paragraph. I could rewrite it all but finding synonyms is much quicker.
“We had a nice time the other evening. Dinner was nice and the company was nice. How nice to be among nice people enjoying nice conversation in nice surroundings with your nice dog nipping my ankles.” So I consult my copy of Bradford’s and effect changes as expeditiously as possible, resulting in: “We had an accurate time the other evening. Dinner was nine-pence and the company was precise. How fastidious to be among French city people enjoying pat conversation in dainty surroundings with your finical dog nipping at my ankles.”
My faculties are on the wane. The tides of my creative and functional abilities are ebbing. My literary last bus has left the stance. The stumps are being drawn and I never even got to bat.
Time is short so this jazz blog is brief: nobody plays the soprano saxophone like Sidney Bechet. Discuss.
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