Now that Garin has explained the meaning of our blog’s name (below), allow me to apologize for its existence.
According to longshoreman-philosopher Eric Hoffer, “That which is unique and worthwhile in us makes itself felt only in flashes. If we do not know how to catch and savor the flashes we are without growth and exhilaration.” The thought prompted Hoffer to start a diary (eventually published as Before the Sabbath) ten years into retirement from the waterfront, with the purpose of catching those flashes to be later expanded into flames. It seems as good a justification as any for staking out yet another plot of the vast virtual wasteland.
We hope to please a variety of readers. Mental voyeurs can peep into our minds via the record of our thoughts here, which promises to be punctuated by comic whimsy and tragic relief. People interested in our past writing can check out the archives and the links we’ll be posting of future published pieces. And those of you who think the digital cup runneth over long ago can take solace in the hope that this will be the squirt that topples it for good.
Welcome to The Lucky Frown, a storage room of observations, insight, and criticism — where ideas are delivered to the dust, with the hope that they might one day be recovered and found useful.
Lucky Frown. The noun is Alec’s. The adjective is mine. I suppose no one will ever know what it means. I certainly don’t know what it looks like, but I’ve felt it gather on my face.
For me, the lucky frown is born at night, in the twilight between the conscious and the subconscious, when words chase each other on my page, trying to find their inevitable sequence. It does not seem inevitable at the time, for the universe is sill infinite and white on my page. Inspiration hits like lightning and withdraws, while the Muse teases from the horizon, as if to announce an ancient challenge. Now, from sheer necessity, ideas seek bodies in words that don’t quite fit. They’re replaced, then rewritten, then erased again. They evolve and devolve and mutate and cannibalize and resurrect until — by some miracle of desire and necessity — the lightning is captured, the Muse ropes its master into the horizon, and the writer sees before him the Sentence as it was always meant to be.
A cynic he might be, but the author knows that he has ushered an idea to its destiny and, at least for that moment, given it a soul. If his words could come to life in that moment and watch “with an auspicious and dropping eye” the movements of their creator’s face, they would see and recognize, with unmistakable cetainty, the self-denying expression of the author’s final contentment… The Lucky Frown.
