A friend has written a memoir. My friends are of memoir-writing age, that quiet pasture between the close of career and commencement of decay. Remembering is our work now – what happened, what did it mean?

                  I riffle my friend’s memoir. I’d read it if time allowed. But time has grown miserly. I too have remembering to do – and it cannot wait. Any day now my past will vanish, erased.

                  I anticipated tranquility in my final years, having put ambition to bed.  Glory-greed kept me antsy in my working years. How I meant to shine! Wherever I was felt cramped beside where I wasn’t. I regularly revised my Nobel Prize acceptance speech, to be ready.

                  That greed has fled. I check now and then and, yes, its bed is empty. I do not expect its return. But in its place has crept not ease but dread – at the lateness of the hour. I contain a treasure – of memories, ideas – which must be buried with me. It enrages me not to be writing – or readying myself to write. I cannot inventory or quantify this inner immensity, but I know the well is deep, for every time I dip my bucket, fresh perceptions emerge. I didn’t know I thought that, I think.

                  All have such wealth within, but not all the means to eruct. Creation is the great emetic, how we let our insides out. On a good day, my fingers feel a stopcock. I do not believe my words need to be heard – our world’s awash with words – but these for some reason need to be said. Insistent as other bodily extrusions, they will not be denied.

                   I describe my condition with diagnostic curiosity. Many my age are relaxed in retirement, jolly, “playing the back nine.” They’ve done their bit, now it’s time for fun. Having fun is not my idea of fun. If I’m not sweating out syllables, or studying for clues to do it better, I’m a wreck. Social relations must repay the time invested. No more “receptions”:  let me live with those I love and eschew the rest!

                  I don’t doubt some defect or deficiency explains my obsession, but that’s not my experience. My need manifests itself as yearning, incarnation, psychic lust, an almost giddy longing for the beautiful word not yet said, that waits to be whelped. Beauty happens! – and may to me if I keep at it.

                  This beauty is not an idea but a melody – an Ahhh, not an A-hah! Because words are my medium, this melody must convey meaning, but it’s the way of saying that captivates, not what’s said. However wise, it’s not for his wisdom we crave Shakespeare but for his music. “To be or not to be” is hardly a new thought.

                  Will I ever call it quits? One day, perhaps, I’ll be done. But I’m in no hurry to shed my affliction. That beauty keeps me eager, with its taunting, winking, out of reach. I don’t want to have time for my friend’s memoir, for nothing in its pages can help me toward my goal. My reading is mostly rereading – of the magicians who found their way to music. How did they manage it? That they did is my encouragement. What one human has achieved, another might.

                  I compose, too, to console. Those I love have made my life worth the bother. Mightn’t I bless them with my production as my beloved predecessors blessed me? Mightn’t I help them feel empowered, important, embraced, as Thoreau and Shakespeare and so many others served me? I doubt that result – but the chance entices.