Impulsion is good for me

I usually always plan what I'm going to write before I post a blog.

But I think I'll change.

For one post, at least.  For one post, I'll write what comes to mind as I write it, and then I'll post it with absolutely no editing for aesthetics, and see if I like it.

I've been trying to write about the books I've read as I read them, both for the sake of writing in a critical perspective and simply writing in general.  I shouldn't ever stop writing.  They say a shark sinks when it stops swimming; with their streamlined body and powerful muscles, all they were built to do was swim.  They sink if they stop doing what they were built to do.

I'll at least list the books I've read so far for cataloging purposes: my latest being The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein, Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens before that, and currently on Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.  I really admire Dickens- his writing is seriously crazy good, I become simultaneously excited and disappointed when I read his stuff- excited to be reading it, disappointed that I could never emulate his style, no matter how hard I try.

I'm a bit in despair, however, for the fact that I love Charles Dickens, and yet I can't recall anything of A Tale of Two Cities that I read only a little before I came to Korea close to seven months ago.  Talk about irony.

Hm.  I think impulsive writing is good for me.  I'm always pressuring myself to write well, so I remain critical of my writing even as I write, which I, somewhere deep down, know must be counter-productive; but this is liberating.  Writing for the sake of my soul, to express the speculations of something purer than me even while it resides in me, to produce without attaching a cost or value.

Milk.

What does it take to be a man?

One who doesn't deny fear, but embraces it, to hold it close and let go to see it transformed into courage; one who doesn't hold back affection, but expresses it for the fact that he is not less of a man because he feels as much as he acts and thinks; one who, in fact, acts by how he feels, for it if it be morally upstanding or against it if it be morally depriving; one who wavers only to consider right and wrong and never to consider the opinions of others; one who lives for the cause, but is willing to die for the effect.

A man like Christ was.