Day 18: sewage

This is a picture of a shipwreck at Fort Stevens. Depending on the tide and sand levels, you can see more or less of the ship's skeleton. And, so you know, I typed "sewage" just to make you read this:

So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years-
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres-
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholy new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate,
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate - but there is no competition -
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.

- from The Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot

In the last few days I've been incredibly down about my writing. Nothing has ever seemed so meaningless, ill-crafted, trivial, adjective, adjective, adjective. Then I stumbled on Eliot and he nailed all my frustrations right on:

"one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate,
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion."

And here:

"And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate"

And with: "but there is no competition -
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious."

And all you smart, scholarly people are free to call me out and say he was just talking symbolically about whales. I dare you.

Signing off.