[OPE] Dating Guide for the Left-Wing Writer

Paula,

Before I forget. Your piece is no doubt welllmeant but it strikes me it
could be interpreted as somewhat naively condescending. Many of us went
through hell to say what we wanted to say. I never owned a Guevara T-shirt
all my life and I cannot remember ever wearing T-shirts with slogans. The
only one I remember was one about French nuclear detonations in the Pacific,
saying "what if we tried that in France?" or something like that. I try not
to appear as a stinky hippy.

If you are not trying to ape people with money or popularity all the time,
why not write your text as you think it should be written, and - assuming
common sense - stand corrected by the response that you get?

Personally, I have hundreds of different writing styles, which one comes
out, just depends on the situation. OK, you can always learn something new,
but what's the motive?

By the time I would start buying my books as a sort of ornamentation or
showtime, or writing purely for effect, I would be buying into all the
phoney culture I am trying to get away from. I have a purpose for my books,
I want to do something with them or an idea in them, and what anyone else
spying into my private life thinks of that, is not my problem. And if it
does become a problem, I'll deal with it in my own way. If it is not
perceived as sexy, it's not my problem. Should I hypothetically never have
sex again, it will not be my problem either. Anyway, most of what you will
get here in Holland is sexual harassment. It has nothing to do with love,
romance, care, genuine feeling etc. but with power, status, bluffing,
competition, prejudiced appearances, and money. The best you can do, if you
are reasonably sensitive, is immunize yourself against this harsh culture.

When I emigrated, I left a lot of books behind, but I regret that now, I
still had to do things with some of them, and you cannot even get some of
those books anymore. You just don't realise all the time it takes, to get to
the point where the books are in reach when you need to consult them, the
value your own book collection has. You realise it, only when you no longer
have it, and suddenly you need to look up that particular passage... and you
hope that a library reasonably closeby will have it, or that you can
interloan it. Even so, it can take hours, days and weeks to get hold of the
text again. I cannot even get hold anymore of texts I wrote myself, so how
about that!

Yesterdays' radical and alternative ideas are today's overpriced coffeetable
books. So why not aim for tomorrow's new ideas, today? If I cannot succeed
the way I am, why should I bother?

Jurriaan

How kind of you to let me come!
Now once again, where does it rain?
On the plain! On the plain!
And where's that blasted plain?

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Received on Mon May 18 13:40:37 2009