It has been snowing, raining. I lie in bed listening to the brook rushing – foamy, turbid, engorged. What is it telling me, I wonder, then wonder what my question means. Telling me? The brook is no messenger, it is itself. Neither it nor anything signifies. We coexist, that is all, the brook in its immemorial channel, I alert after sleep. What vanity to imagine myself the object of the brook’s verve! Yet human, no? That is how religions tell their stories: the earth was made for Man’s abode.

            We cannot be satisfied with insignificance. For any other creature is life such a puzzle? Why can’t existence be enough? Why must we disturb the obvious with the mysterious, as if the visible were an illusion, as in the theater? We listen to life as children to their parents’ murmurs: what are the grownups not telling us?

            Puppy Henry curls in the armchair, tired from our morning walk. Henry is new to snow. He barked at it from the window, alarmed at its movement, then leapt and spun in it hilariously, finding its intentions benign. The snow was cold and slippery and fun – what more did a body need to know?

            I search for meaning. Like Sherlock with his magnifier, I examine clues, fierce to find who’s done this and why. I piece together clues till a picture emerges, an a-hah. Lots of humans do this in different ways, doping out where we are and why.

            It’s nuts. There is no meaning, I know, I’m not a nitwit. I know, but do not believe. Of course I was meant! You too – all of us. Why would anything be made for no reason, especially a work as wondrous as life? Doesn’t the magnificence of creation prove some creator’s intent? Let’s get to the bottom of this!

            I share with you my findings. Whatever I write is lab notes. I noticed this; here, I hazard, is how this connects. Hush! – I keep my ear to the ground – can’t you hear the brook’s song?

            More than occupation, this search for meaning is my preoccupation, vocation, why I rejoice waking. The absurdity of my search in no way diminishes my exhilaration. I scarcely see until I’ve seen behind, like a clockmaker peering behind the clock’s face into its gears. My life matters to me as a case history, from which lessons can be derived. I’m doing this now. I woke to a stream noisier than usual after snow and rain. What to make of it? Translate my inquiry into words, connect any notions to others stored in my attic. Who has thought this before? Many, I’m sure – “There is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes, circa 400 BCE). How do I connect to my predecessors? Why am I thinking this now?

            I tidy my thoughts into six hundred words. That is the size of my specimen container. We must organize our thoughts, so they do not scatter like so many scraps. The dimensions of the container are arbitrary: it might be a sonnet, symphony, frieze, minuet: a shape recognizable to others, suggestive of an order implausible and soothing. What we call art is a tidying of anarchic actuality into a delusion of sense.

            Having tided my thoughts, I feel – you’ll laugh at this – I’ve done something, contributed my mite to the world’s store. I’ve discerned and expressed an order which does not exist, expending ink and paper (or screen time) on words with no use. I do this, I explain, for your delight but truly it’s for my own.

            Henry grunts in his dream. The brook sighs.