(Today’s missive refused to keep within its bounds.)

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

                  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 to amuse and console those at home. I say console because love wonders about the whereabouts of loved ones – physical and emotional – and not to hear kindles concern. I wanted to assure those that cared I was OK, not always happy, but growing in awareness, confidence, 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. 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 boundless ignorance and say what I see. Any art trains its disciples; writing trains a 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 who knows for sure has ceased learning. “Certainty is a redoubt from doubt,” I wrote early on.

                  Writing insensibly hones one’s opinions about writing. There is no right way to write any more than there is a right way to be: personality, purpose, moment continually vary. Today’s music is as distinct from yesterday’s as its 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 laments

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                  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, concurrence, respect? A writer begs of a reader their most precious possession, time. Am I repaying my readers’ generosity, giving my all in return?

                  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 stock 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 predictability 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 Internet barrages us with cóntent (emphasis – emphatically! – on the first syllable!). Unable to predict how long we’ll converse – five minutes or fifty – a daily session becomes harder to accommodate in a crowded schedule, clouding anticipation with anxiety. I do not expect even my most devoted 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 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 our moment by sharing it. I vary tone and topics not to turn one-note-Johnny. The more familiar a conversation, the less pleasurable. On the other hand, I wish always to sound “like myself.” It can take a writer a long time to sound “like their self.”

                  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 his world more right. I tell the truth best I can – and laugh when I can, even through tears.

                  I aim for a diction that’s respectful but not bland. A monotone is monotonous in music or prose. From Shakespeare, Thoreau, Dr. Johnson, I learned 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”:

If I sometimes perpetrate pompous periods, it’s with a 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 long for my prose to sound amative, not discursive, to be enjoyable even when its topic isn’t. Missive-making – this has become something of a motto – is lovemaking. My favorite words invite intimate involvement.

*

                  Do my words have a goal? 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 our business and business generally.

                  When the company revived, I meant to quit the missives for, interesting as business is, it was never my joy. At the urging of a handful of readers, I continued my daily effusions, nudging my curiosity into hazy 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,” wrote Henry Adams, “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. The production of these daily greetings became my mission, passion, 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 expands.

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

                  Is a raft on a river headed anywhere? Only downstream. My missives were my raft, my moment my river. I would see and say best I could, free as Huck and Jim beneath the stars. Saying taught me to say, seeing to see, writing to write, who 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.