So, the moujadra's great and so's the chicken.  But veggies can't really be prepped all that far in advance so I like to do that the day of the meal.  Sometimes I'm too lazy for any real chopping, assembling or cooking, so then I'll have salt-and-buttered radish halves (SO TASTY), par-boiled broccoli, or avocado and honey over toast. 

But not today.  Today I saw my summer squash and hungered for them.  They needed to be eaten anyway.  And the okra.  And the rhubarb.  By next week I can then start on the winter squashes and root veggies.

This afternoon I talked about LJ to another LJ user, with whom I recently made an acquaintance, and I've been thinking about my conversation with her.

At first, she said, she thought LJ was a good place to read.  But now, she said, she feels it is too inbred among users, and the entries are beginning to have the appeal of gossip columns in a tabloid.  She remarked that the entries are no longer revealing, nor do they instill the voyeuristic thrill of reading of what’s going on in (as I think Emerson puts it) that wilderness of the human mind.

I don't agree with her.  I think LJ users all reveal themselves in some way, and I like honest and engaging writing that is meant for LJ as much as I like honest and engaging writing that is meant for a locked drawer.

There are some people, I suppose, who think LJ is a place to collect their voices, spoken in a spectrum of styles, moods, and ages.  What they expect is for people to take what they say at face value.  And then there are others who think of it as a place to look over people's shoulders and into their hearts, like looking beneath the rim of a teacup.

I am -- depending on when -- a member of both camps.  I think that’s the inherent definition of being a LJ user.  But my foot is more firmly planted in the latter, I should think.  As a general rule, I don’t like writing my personal thoughts down.

"To write something" means to tear, scratch, scorch, or carve something.   Yup yup.  Look it up in the OED (that's E for etymology).  Think ancient scribes and hieroglyphics.  Whenever I think of those scribes, I find myself reluctant to write things down even if I’m granted privacy from prying eyes.  Perhaps it’s because somewhere in that odd mind of mine, I feel that writing both barely scratches the surface of my reflections and brusquely rough-houses those shadows and ripples of my thoughts.  I feel that by writing I've chiseled something crude and common into history and memory; whereas if these thoughts remain unwritten, I’ve done no such evil.  In the vein of what the OED says for the entry, "to write":

"For men use to write an evill turne in marble stone, but a good turne in the dust."

The immutable quality of something “written” (see?  it’s already in past tense -- it is done) doesn’t jive with my perception that language changes and morphs (hence, always in present tense).  I think this is why I like editing more than writing.  Editing acknowledges that language isn’t -- shall I say it? -- cut into stone.  In fact, if we bring out the trusty OED again, "to edit" comes from the term “to bring forth or produce” and, in a charming turn of etymological events, “to give.”  It’s an odd thing to think of “writing” as a destructor while thinking of “editing” as a creator.

“To write is human, to edit is divine."  Who knew?

Now watch me as I obsessively edit this darned thing instead of writing.

ETA:  Times edited - 2