IN THE PURSUIT OF THE PARAGRAPH

For a writer there is nothing sacred and there are no limits. You can't be shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater, but as an author you have to keep pushing the envelop. Ernesto Hemingway, as he was known in the cantinas, said that after three years of journalism you had to leave the profession or it would ruin your creativity. In that business your writing becomes routine and you fall into a rut. You are nothing more than a computer formatted to pen a certain product

Nevertheless, journalism is an excellent starting point for a fledging writer. You learn the basics: introduction, body and conclusion; subject, verb and complement; first drafts, editing and presenting a coherent article to an audience. You learn to communicate with your readers.

My writing benefitted at The Brownsville Herald as the sports editor in the seventies. I wrote three or four columns every week--entitled The Peerless Observer--and in this space I had complete freedom to experiment. You don't have to be objective in sports although you have to have your facts correct. If you have your stats wrong, you lose call credibility.

I learned to find my own voice to the point I could write fiction. I read pieces that I wrote almost 50 years ago and my passion and penchant for taking no prisoners were a part of my character from the outset. The major difference is that my editing skills have improved immensely. And we slowly abandoned the fancy words for a simpler vocabulary, but that doesn't preclude a writer from scrutinizing his Thesaurus for the perfect adjective.

Going back to the intro, there may be nothing sacred and there are no limits, but there is an awareness that one must tread softly. That doesn't mean you don't go for the jugular when you feel the inspiration, but you have to make judgment calls. When you are sucking the marrow out of life or someone else's bones, you have to ask yourself if defying the laws of gravity is worth the effort or will you be no better than Icarus and crash back to earth. 

But I do have one genre that is second to none--confessional writing. I can present myself as cruelly as I want and nobody will dispute the facts since I'm the only one with the inside information.

In this mental state, akin to madness, your weaknesses reveal your strengths. Robbed of your precious possessions by the most evil of viragos, you turn to blind revenge. You want every letter of every syllable to be a dagger as you set out on your vindictive crusade to slay the fiend with a thousand cuts, but with each thrust you are only killing yourself. 

After the insanity runs its course and the battlefield is strewn with carnage, you discover that your own scars are thicker than ropes from which you could hang yourself. The blood flows so prodigiously from gaping wounds in the rest of your body that you find yourself with the Egyptian soldiers bent on revenge drowning in the Red Sea. From the depths of your self-conscious you hear a haunting voice shrieking in your head, "Murder the monster! Murder the monster!" Then you move to the next paragraph and maybe you recall a moving memory.

I am as prolific as I have been at any time in my life. I have my Tolstoy tome gradually taking shape and my postings on The McHale Report and Facebook indicate that I have my mojo. I keep my hand on the pulse of Brownsville and I love posting photos by themselves and placing incisive captions above them.

I love sports, but when the body ages and there are no longer any more magical moments, you can still be sitting on your balcony in the morning sun and composing a poem or a short story or a newspaper article or even the next chapter in a novel. 

Art is a constant challenge because it weighs on your mind; you're never content. The slugger crashes three homers last night and strikes out four times today. There is negative murmuring in the dugout. Art is no different. You have to be productive. Otherwise, you can't live with yourself.

It's midnight. I went downtown for tacos and a Topo Chico. Tomorrow night is the half-priced wine special with a spaghetti deal at an Italian restaurant. Two of my closet buddies--five decades of friendship--will join me and for the following two hours we'll laugh to our hearts content. And just like I'm finishing this piece right now, I will probably come home with a slight buzz and after a hit on a joint, I'll publish a short story about three old men enjoying their waning lives.