By and by, I have grown fond of thinking in terms of keywords. That is, words used as reference points for further information about the contents of entire documents. Such as my Residua, of course. What would be the keyword that would characterize my magnum opus? Or me, my entire bloody self, for that matter. The word that attracts me most at this juncture, and it attracts me to the point of pain, is “dissident.” From Latin, sitting apart. Someone in disagreement with authority or prevailing opinion. All authority and all prevailing opinion, as a matter of fact. Dissident as such. Dissident sans phrase. The dissident. Yes, yes. That is surely me, and no kidding. But I am still to figure out how to use this appealing keyword as a reference point for further information about the contents of my Residua. For if I search through a bit less than two-million words, the word comes up eleven times only. Luckily, the pieces unearthed by the search do stretch over no less than thirty years of ceaseless scribbling.

Addendum (April 8, 2018)

Interestingly, this particular keyword is not among the batch decided upon earlier the same year to characterize my magnum opus on the World Wide Web (“Key Words or Phrases,” March 30, 2008). The same holds for the addenda to the same piece from 2014, 2016, and 2017. Although I have thought of myself as a dissident often enough, I have never committed myself to this label with any conviction, let alone determination. In retrospect, this plucky piece is about the pain of legal shenanigans to which the former mayor of Motovun has subjected me a month earlier, which are still with me an entire decade later, albeit in reverse, as it were (“Bon versus Croatia,” April 13, 2015). I can only hope that the legal quagmire will be behind me in a few more years. Be that as it may, the word “dissident” does not attract me at this stage of my life, not to mention the definite article in front of it. Ouch! The swagger of deluded youth…