Today’s is long. I wrote it in three parts, but the three were really one, so I offer it entire.

                  Recently I’ve revisited my dozen years of publishing daily missives, essays of about six hundred words, to friends. I began this practice with a purpose in mind, never dreaming it would persist so long. Now I intend to continue it until I no longer can, partly for boasting rights – who in history has published so long and consistently? – but more, for the endless and depthless gratification of the endeavor. My missives have blessed me with mission, education, focus and friends; that they’ve livened others’ lives enhances their bounty. 

                  That few, if any, have ventured so far in this direction makes me curious what I’ve learned along the day. All my writing has been travel writing: my mind wanders somewhere and reports back its findings vividly enough to amuse or console those at home. I say console because love wonders about the whereabouts of loved ones – physical and emotional – and their silence spawns concern. I wanted to keep in touch and assure those that cared I was OK, not always happy, but growing in awareness, confidence, and calm. Each of my thousands of missives was a letter home.

                  We learn by doing. Making so many missives taught me about the medium, what I felt and thought, who I was. Never did I write what I knew, only what I didn’t, delighting in the discovery of self-expression. I do not know what I think until I’ve said and often what I say takes me by surprise. Never have I wanted for a topic; I need only venture into my interminable ignorance and say what I see. Any art trains its practitioners but writing especially trains the writer to think.

                  I had no lesson to impart, like a professor, or creed to propound, like a preacher. No scholar, I know nothing for sure, except that anyone sure they know for sure has ceased exploring. “Certainty is a redoubt from doubt,” I wrote early on, and it has become a saying I live by.

                  Writing so much inevitably, if insensibly, honed my opinions about writing. There is no right way to write any more than there is a right way to be: personality, purpose, instant continually vary. Today’s music is as distinct from yesterday’s as the weather. But one may derive for one’s own and perhaps others’ benefit certain principles or rules to live by. I write to learn how to write; I read for the same reason. In Four Quartets, T. S. Eliot groaned about

…the years largely wasted, the years of l’entre deux guerres—
Tr[ying] to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it.

How I envy his eloquence!

                  A writer’s first questions opening a blank page should be, Why am I doing this? To whom am I speaking and what do I hope to accomplish with my words? Is my aim to entertain, enlighten, educate, persuade, impress? Do I seek my readers’ love, awe, surrender, respect? A writer begs of a reader their most precious possession, time. Am I repaying your generosity, giving my all in return for your gift?

*

                  Composing six hundred words a day for a dozen years has gotten me into the habit of producing pieces of about that length. Pieces this length become candidates for future missives, stocking my larder against the inevitable eventual rainy day. Among my ghoulish fantasies is continuing to publish after I’ve ceased to write or, perhaps, be. If I died tomorrow, I could keep sending you many months’ worth without repeating.

                  The more constant a conversation, the more welcome consistency of duration. I settled on six hundred words, after experimenting, because they felt sufficient to say something but brief enough not to burden the recipient. The incessant Internet barrages us with content (emphasis, emphatically, on the first syllable!). If I can’t predict how long we’ll converse – five minutes or fifty – a daily session becomes harder to accommodate in a schedule, clouding anticipation with anxiety. I do not expect my beloved readers to read me every day, but when they choose to, I want them to know in advance what they’re in for, so they relax. (I have dear friends who irregularly send me pieces of irregular length which I must “make time for.” Time is hard to make.)

                  My purpose writing you is friendship’s – to liven your day, mollify a moment by sharing it. I vary tone and topics not to turn bore or one-note-Johnny. The more predictable a conversation, the less enjoyable. On the other hand, I wish always to sound “like myself,” not some weird aberration. It can take a writer a long time to sound like themselves.

                  The self I wish to sound like is convivial, humorous, curious, urgent, passionate, affectionate, various, confident but not overconfident, tender but not sloppy: a self for whom living is a serious business; who wants to get it right – and to get our world more right. I tell the truth best I can – and laugh when I can, even through tears.

                  My diction aims to be respectful but not bland. Predictability of tone is as unwelcome as predictability of duration is welcome. A monotone is monotonous in music or prose. I learned – from Shakespeare, Thoreau, Dr. Johnson, others – to give every sentence fizz but not too much. I write to be reread (though I hardly expect it).

                  The attitude I strive for is that evoked in Robert Frost’s great poem, “The Pasture”:

I’m going out to clean the pasture spring;
I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I sha’n’t be gone long.—You come too.

I’m going out to fetch the little calf
That’s standing by the mother. It’s so young,
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I sha’n’t be gone long.—You come too.

If I sometimes perpetrates pompous periods, it’s with a conspiratorial wink, like Dr. Johnson’s, never to coerce regard.

                  The music of prose matters as much to me as its sense. Readers read, I’ve long believed, with their ears no less than their eyes. I dream of a prose that sounds amative, not discursive, to be enjoyable even when its topic doesn’t entice.

                  Missive-making – this has become something of a motto – is lovemaking. The words I most admire invite sensual entanglement.

* 

                  Do these words have a purpose? Do they tend toward some end?

                  Yes and no.

                  This project began with a certain objective: inform investors in my troubled company that we were on the mend and that their CEO was on the case. My subject matter was a particular business and business more generally.

                  When the company revived, I meant to quit the missives for, interesting as business is, it was never my main interest. At the urging of a handful of readers, I continued my daily Good Mornings, nudging my curiosity into murky corners.

                  Readership grew. My comfort and confidence grew. I retired, giving me more time to compose. Jane and I traveled, then for four years relocated to Rome. “The habit of expression,” said Henry Adams in his famous autobiography, “leads to the search for something to express.” America descended into a catastrophic confusion I feared (and still fear) might destroy our experiment in self-government. A few readers grew to many grew to many more. The production of these daily missives became my mission, passion, and defining accomplishment, the work I might be remembered for.

                  Literature, my lifelong love, was my lodestar, morality my mantra: how best – for a person or nation – to be. A monstrosity was mangling America: might we be saved? My ambition was never polemical; but morality, to matter, must be translated into policy and politics. Willy-nilly these pages became political, as civil strife loomed.

                  God popped into my life, a God of my own coloration, plopped onto my work-couch one warm summer night. I listened closely to His direction because He was, well, God. Grandchildren came, with their teaching. The more I explored, the more there was to. If inquiry is your avidity, your world does not dwindle but expand.

                  Was I making literature, that is, a “book”? I had no idea – and didn’t care. I was making friends – and sometimes shapely sentences – and my audience was growing. Retirement had relieved me of any need to score.

                  Is a raft on a river headed anywhere? Only downstream. My missives were my raft, my river my moment, I would see and sing best I could, free as Huck and Jim beneath the stars. Singing taught me to sing, seeing to see, writing to write, none richer or luckier than I.

                  At the heart of any moral system pulse gratitude and humility. We flicker, a speck amidst infinitudes, doing what we can to better kin and kind. Though we may claim to, we do not know why we’re here or what will happen when we cease to exist. We have a choice: to be mad, sad, or glad. More than we imagine, our attitude toward the world is up to us.

                  I am often sad or mad: it is my nature. But I choose to be glad, work at it with each word, feeling for reasons to rejoice. My journey, I’m convinced, resembles yours, which interests us in one another. We’re more likely to like those like us.

                  I intend to keep drifting on my raft till I no longer float. I write for love – of writing and those I love. God is my tide. I thank my lucky stars.