Word-o-philia

I published a paean to the Wednesday Guy a while back and I want to expand on it slightly. I wish I could tell him this directly, but since he's a single male in serious search of a mate and I am a mated female who blithely trolls the CL Personals for amusement (or in this case, inspiration), it might be a little hard to explain the fan mail.

WG, as I will henceforth call him, is a very good writer. One of the best I have seen in the personals. Unfortunately, that's not saying much. The average male posting on the Internet personals (on CL or anywhere else) is "looking for a women (sic.) in to (sic., again) fine wine, cottaging, going out and staying in to watch a movie". There's absolutely nothing wrong with all that, it's just... conventional... that's all. Intellectually and emotionally tame and uncreative. Prosaic. Yeah.

When I stumble upon a guy who can sling words around, turn a phrase, and open up his heart, I'm hooked. That goes for the ladies, as well (however, I don't find myself cruising the w4m ads as often). And, since I'm on a roll, as mentioned previously, that goes for blogs, or... or... anything, really! More and more, I find I'm a sucker for the literary-minded, I suppose.

I suspect I'm partly drawn in by the extra courage it takes to express oneself more creatively. Not only does it entail more emotional vulnerability, but it requires more guts artistically. There's a risk of appearing too snooty, or like too much of a bleeding heart, or like a poser who doesn't really have a genuine command of the English language. WG's intent -- to reveal his inner emotional world -- is immediately unique, but the word pictures he paints are what truly get me. This guy crafts his posts carefully. I pay attention to the phrases and descriptions and the choices he makes to express himself 'just so'. I've never had writerly ambitions, but if I did, I would look up to him. That sounds lofty, but it's true. He may be a hunchbacked, bug-eyed, pimply, halitosis-plagued lonely guy (or not), but he gives good copy, dammit (for the record, so does Ian Brown):

"...I think about Pt, and I think about Pr. Two fine fellows, writers both, whom I once knew years ago.

"One evening, in the mid 90s I guess, we sat in deeply comfortable armchairs in the attic of a dilapidated house and talked about the thoughts we had lost. The ideas not jotted down, the ephemeral dreams dispersed by alarm clocks, the unfulfilled promises of early drafts that become ghosts haunting the final revisions.

"We were three poets, sharing between us the ego of six and maybe the talent of two. We'd each just had some slight works published in small journals read only by those who have their names on the inside cover of that issue...

"...On that evening in the attic we talked about the thoughts we'd lost, and we praised each other with the false modesty of young writers who think they invented the vowel. And as we read each other's works, and believed each other's praise, our heads swelled and swelled and swelled some more.

"Ever since then, whenever the topic of lost thoughts comes up, I think of that night in the attic. Pt, who fought the world and gave his mind to the fray. Pr, who embraced the world but never someone else. And me, still riding and writing and trying to find some place between them. Some place connected to the world, and connected to someone within it. The reason I'm writing these letters."