Passé, Blasé, Just Plain Manqué!

Aging ain’t pretty and, sometimes, it gets downright ugly. You are forced to evaluate yourself for flaws and failures. Blogs are no different from people in that respect.

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Flaming Cake courtesy of Photobucket.com (wherein the word ‘courtesy’ means ‘stolen.’)

Facebook’s insistence that everyone in the world wish you a Happy Birthday resulted in people I haven’t spoken with in years contacting me last week when I became a quinquagenarian.*

In one exchange, an old friend asks me how I’ve been doing and I oh-so-subtly direct him to the wonders of my blog. His response?

“…Blogs are so passé…”**

*Ouch*

I don’t know about you, dear reader, but I put my heart and soul into what I write. This off-hand dismissal of my craft resulted in the following poetic interlude—performed in the key of é.

Critique Not-so Enchanté

My writing is passé,

Or so you say!

Perhaps you are no devoteé?

Or maybe you are just a protégé without caché?

I may sometimes, How do you say?, write a hit out of the park!

(Parquet?)

Sometimes it’s a swing-and-a-miss—or manqué.***

My writing may even skirt the edge of cliché!

But always, I churn the brain frappé

To scoop out a little grey cell pâté.

A luscious, literary canapé!

No hard-boiled reporter am I, producing the latest exposé!

But I do not deserve to be roasted a lá flambé!

Mayhap you will reconsider your communiqué?

But as for me, I am très désolé.

So there you have it. A damning condemnation that not only am I unoriginal, practically staring down the barrel of obsolescence, but so is my writing medium. (Not well done!)

Turning half-a-decade makes a person stop and think! Where exactly am I headed? Have I missed my chance to reinvent myself when I haven’t even invented myself yet in the first place?

Nothing snarky here, just showing you my actual birthday cake baked by my mom.

 

Have I’ve officially reached a plateau that says: “Nothing new, innovative, or fresh expected. Move along!!?”

Perhaps it is fatalism of creativity? Maybe I suffer ennui? But I will steal from a kindred spirit—a voice who calls from the realm of the dead. I will lick the pen of a poet and echo  Stéphane Mallarme :

Je me mire et me vois ange! et je meurs, et j’aime —Que la vitre soit l’art, soit la mysticité— A renaître, portant mon rêve en diadème, Au ciel antérieur où fleurit la Beauté.

(Translation)

I can see my reflection like that of an angel! And I feel that I am dying, and, through the medium Of art or of mystical experience, I want to be reborn, Wearing my dream like a diadem, in some better land Where beauty flourishes.)

                                                                                                      Stéphane Mallarmé

Asterisk Bedazzled Footnote:

*L is the new XL (I’m talking Roman numerals, people, not size!)

**My immediate response? “Oh yeah? Well…your face is passé!”

***I noticed the odd appearance of accented ‘é’ words and cleverly sensed a theme. When I saw Manqué on a list of words ending in é, I had to use it. And then, there is the neato twist: where the definition for manqué conveniently defines how it feels to turn 50!

Man·qué (mäNGˈkā/) adjective:

having failed to become what one might have been; unfulfilled.

 

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You’ve read this far bonus:

For those of you who missed it before, here’s the CARROT CAKE RECIPE for the cake my mom makes.