1.23.24

Good morning.

            What we think is never what we think.

            I wake wondering, “Is this what I think?”

            I try to speak truth – it’s my little vanity – but even my truest truth is partial, asterisked, momentary, temporary, subject to revision at the drop of a hat. I type “drop of the hat” and wonder whence that idiom and should I chase it or force this inquiry forward – “two roads diverge”! – either path affecting the character of our outing while daubing my portrait of the guy who’s writing. Everything changes everything, nothing stays the same, today’s Carll is neither yesterday’s nor tomorrow’s – is there any certainty I can grasp like a taffrail in a squall?

            This thought is new to me – not wholly new, no thought is that – but until this moment, as I recall, never so starkly staked. And if I accept this thought as true, biting into it like a coin for counterfeit, doesn’t that change everything, transform my present surroundings into a stage set, soon to be supplanted by the next? If nothing is truly true, how do we construct a reliable point of view? Isn’t that like building a cabin with your logs all punk?

            I review the topics I think about to test my assertion. Literature. Yes, my relations with authors are unstable. Dickens recently has been growing in estimation, George Eliot shrinking. (Joyce keeps his basement lodging.) A friend asks my favorite Dickens novel. “Well, today I’d go for…” my non-answer begins.

            Politics. Trump has drastically altered my idea of America and Americans, scaring the bejeezus out of me, and, alas, he’s not done. The crass cynicism of some Congressmen and the pathetic pusillanimity of many Senators make me nauseous. I await with interest what sort of America emerges from the wreckage of my preconceptions. Once, believe it or not, I was “proud to be an American,” like in the song.

            Love. Here Jane, my grandkids, and puppy Henry tutor this student in need of “extra help.”

            Beauty. I recently enrolled in Professor Caravaggio’s course on the subject, with guest lectures by Professors Bernini, Pinturicchio, others. Bach’s “Introduction to Beauty” survey, a constant since high school, continues to infuse.

            Religion/God/saints. My about-turn here feels a hundred and eighty degrees, almost, dare I say, a conversion. Rome, retirement, saints, my fumbling for truth, and a personal appearance by the Big Guy (or so it seemed), contributed to this overthrow of cocky convictions.

            Old age. Our final precinct, so long dreaded, has turned out my happiest adventure. Each parent’s death had been ugly in its way: spare me, my being cried. Physical privations and predations, loss of clout, neglect by brawnier successors, made me cringe in prospect. Turns out, these years are the prize of life, not its price; the jackpot. Who knew?

            Language, my sparring partner, drubs me daily, wily, shifty, sweetie-pie, taunting, tantalizing with elusive charms. Meanings shift (the verb trump, for example, has become unusable). Oh, what I might compose if only! – yet “every attempt is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure,” as T.S. Eliot put it, groaning for us all.

            Then there’s Me – don’t get me started! Protean, unpredictable, each dawn I wonder who’ll show up. A handful and a headache, grouchy when I should be joyous and vice versa, meaning to do one thing and doing another, the thought of me exhausts me. Not that I mind babysitting, but can’t you send me an easier toddler, God!

            So yes, based on my experience, what we think isn’t what we think, at least for long. Which makes existence thrilling, suspenseful, hat-dropping.