Talking To Myself

(The single page of writing referred to is from 'The Truth Is Coming' - D).

15th October, 2009.

Dear David,

I feel as if I'm talking to myself.

You seemed to enjoy the single page of writing I showed you last night, so I have decided to give you the whole thing, along with the letter referred to therein, which I call "The Truth Defined". These are for you to keep, although you may show them to Conan, who has read other things I have written. Show them to people you like and people you don't like, although I would advise giving them only copies.

I may put my writing on a blog, publishers don't seem to want to publish what I write.

In reading these letters and in life remember "The truth, though imperfectly expressed, is still the truth". The flaws are mine, the truth is flawless.

I may edit, if publication beckons. I write spontaneously, and must preserve the spontaneity of the original inspiration.

As a name for a blog, I thought 'Half-way House' might suit. I had thought "The Eternal Verities Revisited, Or Whatever You're Having Yourself", mixing the (hopefully) profound and colloquial, but it seems a bit long. What do you think of 'Half-way House'?.

Hope you enjoy all this,

The other David

Connecting to the World

November 10th, 2009
I sent the below to Abie Philbin Bowman, a (relatively) young 'journalist, comedian and broadcaster' I and my brother heard speak today. My brother told Abie that I thought he was cynical, but not to worry, he would grow out of it!

Hi Abie,

My brother spoke to you a few hours ago at the seminar in the Irish Writers' Centre, Parnell Square, Dublin.

As he told you, I have a blog, set up for me by a computer literate person, who had never had anything to do with blogs, like myself, kestreltales.blogspot.com. Less than twenty people know of its existence, only friends and acquaintances of mine, and I want to link, if that is what it is called, as necessary, so that it is available to the general public, but I don't know how to do that.

I am a computer illiterate, but not otherwise so, I hope.

Please visit my blog, if you like it, see if someone you know also likes it and could explain in baby talk what to do to connect it to the outside world.

Also, if you like my blog, pass on its address to others, please.

Content is king, it has been said, and I intend to keep posting to the blog. Someone at the seminar said he did not like blogs because they are unedited, my stuff is. I saw it as a way of publishing, including stuff I tried to get published in the print media without success, e.g. my Today in the Dail sketch. There is great freedom in cyberspace, absolutely anything goes, and I take full advantage of that. See also my Prostitution piece, in somewhat the same vein.

God and the Devil strut their stuff in a blog near you - read and enjoy.

Let me know what you think,

All the best,

David

PS I intend to keep writing and maybe get an agent and perhaps if I get enough stuff written, there could be a book. As Spike Milligan said, I have no plan, so nothing can go wrong.

Communication

I forgot to say why my last had its title 'Dublin Damnation'. I know a man who is writing a book, a memoir, and he wanted a title and I thought of that one. He likes it.

The question 'why' looms large. Why does a person wish to blog? To communicate. Communication is a two-way process. A blog is a modern means of communication, the means does not matter, the end does, and the end is communication.

To a beginner, 'how' is an important question. The six questions of Rudyard Kipling need answering, but 'why' is all important.

Freedom is the overriding characteristic of a blog, the freedom to be oneself and express oneself. One realises that, but still must ask those questions, 'how' and 'what'. The answers to those questions are technical ones. As my mother said, first one masters technique, then one expresses feeling.

Neither a blog nor anything else should be treated as an end in itself, that way lies damnation, in the eyes of others if nowhere else.

In discovering how to do anything, we discover ourselves.

Bye,

Uncle Aesop

A Blog is Born

A child in the womb hears nothing but its mother's heartbeat, muffled thunder, and feels her pulse and its own pulse and is warm and cosy with its mother's blood flowing through its veins and associates all of its feelings with warmth and happiness. Then it is born. It becomes aware of its own faculties, its senses, and learns to interact with its environment, through these, at first wordlessly, then it learns to speak. The child is happiest when at one with the world, and realises that.

When a blog is born, it goes through similar stages. There is, for the blogger, a (steep) learning curve. The blogger learns about the (blogging) environment and himself at the same time and his purpose is that the one (himself) should be in harmony with the other. I am on that learning curve. Through mastering technicalities the blogger learns mastery of the self. All must be effortless. When is something not hard? When it is easy. When is it easy? When you know how. When do you know how? When you understand. The purpose of my blog is the promotion of understanding.

We are on this journey together.

Each life story is the journey of a soul.

David

Dublin Damnation

Wed 11/11/09
Wed 11/11/2009

To A Certain Person and everyone else

Hi,

My blog now has thirteen posts on board, the most recent being one suggested by you.

What I am doing and saying and writing appears an inchoate, formless mass up to this point.

My blog is evolving, and so am I, along with it.

Bishop discovered, put away, two books on blogging, one of which we have now a second copy, but it may be returned to Hodges Figgis, he has a good relationship with them, because he buys many books there.

This appears to be the case.

When you start a blog, you must get it connected (to the outside world).

Your idea of submitting it for an award is a good one.

It seems to be the case that there are several awards and several directories, to which people go, and to which a blog should be connected.

Then, the blogger (me, in this instance) should read other blogs, leave a comment on them, and point back to my own blog.

By the quality of ones comments one is judged. If people find you

readable, they will want to read more.

Here is an insight.

If you want to be listened to, you must listen to others.

Tell Oominor I said she does not need to reply to my agency request, I must learn that (some) people mean what they say.

Your brother, whom I call Skywalker, made some pertinent comments, which I have taken on board.

As regards that insight above, someone else said it first, in these words 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you'.

We must discover truths for ourselves, but we may share insights.

As regards getting the whole hang of this blogging thing, I understand things in terms of principle (there is no other way), once you have grasped the principle everything else is obvious.

We do not understand in terms of what but of why. Explanations given

in materialistic terms are not explanations. A (very) good book on

blogging remains to be written.

First comes an overview, then a judicious mixture of what and why, this is difficult to explain, it is an attempt to explain explanations themselves.

What is always, and should always be treated as, subservient to why.

What serves the purpose of why. Purpose is paramount. Or, to

put it another way, there must be a reason for our actions. Poor

teachers put what first, thinking, if they think at all, that knowing is understanding.

I will leave you on that note.

David

Learning The Game

This is my first post to be typed directly into the blog. I had been either writing them into a word processor or writing them as e-mails, and then cutting and pasting to the blog. A Certain Person (ACP for short) said they are meant to be typed in directly. It certainly saves a lot of hassle, cutting and pasting, and editing out of addresses and so on. Instead, go directly to source, and then the blogger has charge of layout as well as wording.

ACP, when I gave you that name I said you are 'often' right, 'usually' (more often than 'often') would be more correct. Sometime, I will go back and change that word.

The title of this post is taken from a lovely Buddy Holly song. I would like my posts to be as good as a Buddy Holly song.

Transferring from a known environment into the unknown should be done whole heartedly, go all the way, it is so much better and easier.

My writing method is to either write by hand on to paper, or directly at the keyboard, as now. Either way produces satisfactory results.

In Maeve Binchy's book on writing, someone says if you don't enjoy your work, why should anyone else.

My next few posts will be pasted and edited from e-mails, but they will be the last. Thanks, ACP. (Tell me, what is the significance of 'Labels', as distinct from the title of a post? I have given this post the title 'Learning to Blog'.)

David ****