I keep wondering why I do what I do and am the way I am. This is not admiration but curiosity. We can’t help what we’re curious about. I write to explore, not to tell you but join you on a stroll. You might be curious about the same questions. (We are not so different.) Writing for me is not work or worthy, it’s all I know to do. This is odd, I suppose, but not very. We each have our way of coping.

The other night I couldn’t sleep. I tried and tried but no go. Jane and Henry were sleeping. It was too early to get up and do anything.

To hell with it, I switched on my lamp, took up journal and pen, and began. My journal reminds me of the metal bowl my mother put beside my bed to vomit into. If you need to, do it there, she said, she was going back to sleep.

Here is what came:

·      How much is enough?

·      How old do you feel?

·      When is the right time?

·      Am I happy?

·      How’s it going?

·      Are you OK?

The question mark is a hook which snags and drags. I cast them into my depths to see what I reel out. Questions I know the answers to are a waste of time. (What’s “a waste of time”?)

What time is it, anyway? Should I check? What difference does it make? Most creatures are sleeping: those who aren’t wish they were. How to occupy myself dangling in the void of night?

I write. It’s something to do. I’m interested to see what comes. I sometimes think, hey, Shakespeare just sat to write too. Or Keats. Or any of them. They did not know what would come. They dipped their quills and look, words on a page. How worthy? Time would tell.

I write to tell time. It feels like doing something. Doing nothing is scary – tick, tick, till the clock stops, to what end? He was a big shot, big-ish – so what? Writing I’m doing all I can. The quality of what I write is not my doing. I cannot jump higher than I can jump or write better than my best. If my best doesn’t make the cuts, at least I tried.

I always learn something writing. One word leads to the next. One thought leads to the next. Progression is requisite; also euphony. Why are people willing to write unreadably? They have “something to say,” they say. What use saying if no one’s listening?

I liken writing to conversation. Neither lecturing nor preaching, I’m talking with a friend, seeing where our words take us. Writing for me is talking to the childhood chum I dreamed of but never found (“This is my letter to the world/ That never wrote to me”, moaned Emily D.).

Writing makes me happy because it posits an Other and a Future. What more do you need? Together they constitute a reason for being. I write to enliven our time together – mission enough. If you never read what I’ve written, well, at least I tried.

There is always something to write about. Just begin. What do you see? What do you feel about what you see? What memories or thoughts do your feelings stir? Why? Keep asking – there is always the next question and the next. How well are you saying? Might you say better?

Time passes, the page fills, you have done something. Something worth doing? That’s beyond your might. You have done what you could as well as you could. And look, it’s beginning to be light outside.