Dag's Last Jag

I'm getting old. I am old. I am on my last trip, this one maybe taking me to the very end of this life. I'm living for now in Peru, one stop on a long trip to the end of time. There's no going back for me now, mainly because there was never anywhere to go back to, only forward, that road being eternal.


The sun is finally out in Lima, the first time in weeks, this place being overcast due to the Humboldt Current that brings a cold breeze and grey skies. But it's not very cold, not very grey. It's my living, and this is living la vida loca. For an old guy on the road it's acceptable. I have work to do here and not a lot of time for the sun anyway.

I am writing a five volume book on the idea of individuality and individualism, how that is better than fear of loneliness and a flight to collectivism. I have 12 duotangs of hand-written pages, each folder about 100 pages long, some more. I am a terrible typist, and it takes me 12-16 hours per day to make ten pages, often fewer. I am through the first folder now, and working on the second, that being volume one of this effort. I had hoped to live here in Lima for the year I think this will take me to complete, but I think now that I'll travel around some, looking for that one place that will be what I had hoped for when I originally planned to do all this in Vientiane, Laos, that before I couldn't get a proper visa and decided to come instead to South America. Here I am, and for a while here I stay, writing and getting nervous.

It's no fun for me to write this part of a book. I have to type and get it more or less right, which is difficult for me because I type so badly. Worse, I have to confront each and every word I type at least three times, once to type it, once to correct the typos, and once more to ensure that I got the typos fixed. It depresses me and makes me disgusted by the copy I produce and the ideas I have. It gets so bad that, yesterday, for example, I considered jumping off the roof or hanging myself because it seems that nothing I'm doing is working out well. I call this suffering for my art. I get over it by going for a walk and having coffee. I feel better now. The writing continues. I know from years of experience that this stage of writing is the worst, and that the best comes when I have a whole manuscript typed and in my hands so I can work at making the words sing. I'm not going to be there for a long time yet. This is the time to suffer.

My blogging here has been close to non-existent since I arrived in Lima, but I have done a huge amount of typing, for me. I have over one half of volume one done, and and am doing as much as I can to finish this off quickly as I can. I don't know how long this will take me, but once I feel that I have some genuine progress here I will make a better effort to get out and blog and try to be interesting and informative about Peru as I experience it. For now, for a week or more yet, blogging will continue to be light. But be patient. I will return. There's nowhere else to go, really, but forward, wherever that leads me. Hope you will join me in some way as I make my way toward South Sudan and maybe beyond over the coming year and more. till then, back to books.

There's so much to learn, and it's so hard to do.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhlkEDY_O84