My Nostrums

My Nostrums

A skeptical reader sent me a query after reading my profile in my blog. She wondered if I really knew that many languages as I claimed. The answer is I do have a passing acquaintance with all of them. The operative words are “passing acquaintance”. I don’t know them intimately. I don’t get a passing grade with all of them. I merely made a pass (and I am still doing so) at them. I like to flirt with them. I am a big flirt when it comes to languages. I suppose it is one of my nostrums for dealing with the speech impediment I have suffered ever since I learned to speak. I stutter and I stammer. I slur my words. I don’t enunciate. I mumble and grumble until all my audience crumbles under the onslaught of my inarticulateness.

I listed all those languages in there, in public, in broad daylight, as a challenge to my own probity. The act of such brazen ostentation forced me to hit the books daily so I would not embarrass myself if some curious reader would test me one day. There is some truth in the saying, fake it until you make it.

I also claim that I like to write short stories, but the truth is that I have written only seven stories so far, and none is any good. Some of my poems are much better. For the last three months, I have not written a single story, nor have I even come up with any arresting lines of verse; I have been wasting my time writing stupid essays to vent my frustrations at human stupidity, crassness, hypocrisy, and plain sickness. I used to be quite sick myself. That is how now I can spot sickness in humans a mile away. The more I know humans, the more they fascinate me. In fact, there are no more interesting animals on this planet. I love to vivisect them, figuratively speaking – of course. I am no Jeffrey Dahmer. I love to bring into the sunlight their quivering, shivering quiddity of poses and flights of fantasy. I love to expose their moral leprosy in order to move them towards an edifice of understanding that life has no meaning unless one lives and cares more for others than for oneself. During the act of giving oneself to others, one discovers the common humanity and bond that gives rise to poetry.

I suppose I have missed my calling. I should be a fumigator. I like to fumigate hypocritical humans with massive doses of unadulterated facts until they pass out from shame. I like to fulminate their chicanery with the strength of my logic and the unassailability of my arguments.

CanNgon
August 28, 2009