From time to time I see pieces on OS that "just happen" to hark back to previous posts (with links), even some that are thinly disguised attempts to get people to go back and read some brilliant thing that got a measly 6 ratings, and only 5 comments, from our dear ones.

You know, our Best Pieces.

This is one of those. Um, not Best, but thinly disguised. I rip the mask off here.

I wonder, we all do, just what our rep is. I notice my pieces often fall into two categories: wisdom work, as I call it, and aching hard-to-read memory pieces. I worry this has become my cul-de-sac, my ghetto, to some, that many think: "oh that's another one of THOSE from Greg; those are good, but I don't feel like poetic brilliance (sic) about mortality today; I wonder what con or sheldon or tequila posted?"

Or perhaps this: "oh my, great title, sounds like another searing, devastating memory piece from him, I should read that -- oh look Sandra has posted, I LOVE her writing! (click)"

Fair enough, there's no reason...no. wait. This here, on OS, this, altogether, is my magnum corpus dialecti cum loudly, goddamnit! (besides my plays, that is). It cannot, must not be overlooked! I am really thinking of you, dear but inconstant reader: when the day surely comes and grad students are carving out whole careers about the arc of my development, they will condescend to you guys, wondering why so many of you failed to see the Carver/Joyce/Naipaul a-borning here. Um...yeah.

Sigh. Ok. taking a breath. I call bullshit on that last paragraph and -- NO. NOT. Damn, read some of these. I know I have decades of work to do, still, so much to learn, but jeez louise...ok. Stop, Greg.

Begin again.

It seems like many of our best works (good! inclusive, we ALL share this problem) are under-seen here on OS. I sometimes tout works, especially those that shock me with their relative low rating, and the same has been done for me (sandra, verbal, mary, Rob, and especially Jeremiah, Jimmy, and dear, dear gracielou). (good, load up the ones you love, this MIGHT get a few to click on my links, too).

Shit.

In spite of how this NEVER works, trying to be blithe and droll and urgent about the birdcage lining that is the post I made yesterday (I mean come on, whenever someone says in a comment "I will watch you from now on" I think "NO! go back and read my old ones! Doesn't anyone see how they must do this? that someone as good as, um, me, must be read from start to finish, like a collection of o henry or patricia highsmith? do we really think that older stuff was done by the stupider childish version of [me][you], the Yesterday Me, who perforce was still figuring it out? C'mon!), well, you get it, in spite of this, I still want to be read, and so I still...scheme on this. Jesus Christ in a holy bucket.

Ok, begin again. Here it is: a parsing of my work, so that everyone gets it, can sample the incredible variety and scope that is ***Greg***, something for everyone, and... crap.

Parsing diminishes everything. We want our favorite writers to be unaware at some deeply charming level, especially the ones with, ahem, real literary talent. We need them to be a magical blend of shrewd technical savvy and channeled Muse-amento, oblivious to the carnal self-satisfaction that is mature, objective self analysis, intra-editing.

Besides, parsing it is reductive, right? NO one will click on these either way, the brain goes into scan mode, and everyone shifts to the right or left, to see what Chris or Saturn has to say today.

It's like when you comment. You write some painstaking near-flame, tempered just so, or you break down for everyone what the poster might have missed (dotted with syrup so that it cuts clean and forgivably), or you dryly change the subject to YOU while seemingly making it all about THEM, and hit "comment" only to see some typo or Wrong Thing, and then add a second comment, then look at both and feel like a complete horse's ass, like the first comment is now revealing what a pompous patoot you really are (for example I commented here on Dorinda's lovely post on children and the afterlife, going contra on all the pro-afterlife stuff others put there, only to see that i wrote "Part Pooper" at the end, so I posted a "fix", to make it Party, which made the whole thing look stupid.) Right? (besides Part Pooper was kind of weirdly cool. Why do I sweat this stuff?)

The moment we organize our own work, we cheapen; what we all want to be, in ourselves and others, flow-driven rivers of intuitive brilliance, becomes...data? We diminish ourselves. We raise the specter of Calculation. We all know why we do this, flog our blogs, and so we resist the pure selfish selfishness of it. Usually. Even while wishing we could pull it off ourselves, as it were. The moment we become our own grad student archivist we lose luster. Yes?

Nonetheless I do so now. On the off-chance that one of the dozens of Favorites I have here on OS might see something they missed, and comment. And maybe, just maybe, someone will want, no, NEED to go back to the beginning, and read everything, and comment, and maybe that person will be an editor or publisher, who will need to sign me, to get my first book (fictional memoir, uses much of what I post here in the Acher category, over half-done) and who will then be astonished and downright greedy about the screenplay I work on that is the Greatest SciFiAction Movie Ever Conceived (outlined, scenes written, some story-boarding, but a complete finished concept), and (s)he and I will get rich and famous, he(r) for canny judgement, me for towering in both literary and Hollywood milieus, and I can finally put in a pool and write for the rest of life.

SO: here it is, with clever CSS boxes and Categorizations and Thumbnail Descriptions, Prioritized:

...

Rats. Can't do it. (See the sequential list on the left. Which needs updating, so use the View Blog link instead). I want to. but I just can't. Sigh.

But I really want to.