What to do!

Once this quandary might have supplied a missive topic but these days moony navel-gazing is overdone. The more inept the writer, the more fascinated by their process. To interest me in your factory, friend, first produce an estimable product.

That I am dis-missive of this topic doesn’t mean it lacks interest. Here am I at the intersection of eternities with the strength and freedom to make – what? That I should make “the most” of my moment feels, by now, a moral truism: time, once envisioned, must be defied. Dog-pal Henry and infants may relax in innocence; if extinction’s never occurred to you, you can’t be idle or prodigal. Only after realizing that time and one’s chance are circumscribed by death is the race on, the human race, in which all must contend. I cannot do “nothing,” because nothing is something, I am spending my capital to purchase – what? Any choice eliminates a chance. Whatever I’m up to, I am not up to an infinitude of alternatives. This morning’s endeavor, willy-nilly, measures the man.

Writing seems my best bet. I know a little how to do it and some of what I write is read. Your eyes on these words justify my choice. And if you’re not reading me, you might have been, my intentions blameless whatever my result.

What to write about? What’s on my mind. Whether that matter merits your attention is more than I know. Some mysterious collusion produced these thoughts, to which I’m giving utterance. I abide by the decree of happenstance, serving (I believe) as my moment’s amanuensis. Is there calculation in my confection? In every syllable. I’m making, I hope, what someone like me might enjoy reading, that hasn’t been said quite this way; not imposing my will on the flow but letting the words and ideas, like a mountain stream, find their course; discovering what’s on my mind, as curious as an archaeologist sifting sand.

I settle on this abstract (if not abstruse) topic to avert my gaze from the news. The world I wish for is going to hell – the house of my dreams is ablaze – and though helpless to quench the flames I cannot decamp but must bear witness, my eyes stinging from smoke, my emotions nearly numb, waiting for the charred ruins to cool to see what, if anything, might remain. And while I wait, I must consider something, for minds don’t rest. Whatever’s made depicts its moment, if only inadvertently. Different news would produce different words, though the questions they wrestle are perennial.

These pages filling – with unexpectedly peppy script – suffuse their scribe with momentary satisfaction. I’m doing all I can – in the heat and flicker of my dying dream – to make something memorable and not just moan. “Woe is me” gets wearisome fast. Life persists; from the ashes must arise ideas different from those before.

The worth of those ideas is for tomorrow to judge, my job is to voice them best I can. And if I’ve done that, given my all, mightn’t I for a moment rest in peace? Isn’t the “highest and best use” of my hours – a paradoxical conclusion – to do what I please, what I feel called upon to do? Mightn’t my self-absorption be selflessness deep down, surrender to my own divine? Am I not secretary to this committee, keeping the minutes, to preserve what transpired? And isn’t that function as valid as any? Or am I blowing smoke, alchemizing my inutility into an alleged elixir?

I note, fingering pages, I’ve effused a missive’s worth. Two birds with one stone?