I lost my temper. Suddenly. As a tree may be toppled by a gust. Crash, crack of branches, baleful discreditable thoughts. A desire to hurt back. This is not you, I say, knowing it is. Who else? 

                  The source of my rage is of no concern. I had cause. I could explain. Cause, though, cannot excuse the inexcusable.  I knew better. I am better, I insist. Though evidently not.

                  Calmer now – though, hours after, still not calm – I’m still talking myself down.

                  We are not who we think. This is the fundamental human perplexity – and origin of our dramatic interest. Other creatures obey their natures: their responses may be predicted. Humans surprise ourselves – often unpleasantly. We violate the roles we have written for ourselves, the character and behavior we proclaim. If we’re not who we think, then who? And who, if not our supposed self, is in charge?

                  Imagination is humans’ glory and disease. We can see things which are not. We can envision destinations and personalities we desire so vividly we come to believe in them. The grandest souls who bestrode the earth possessed the most vivid visions. Also the damnedest demons. Ideas enter our heads, which we compare to the murky mundane. Love, glory, honor, loyalty, grace, beauty are ideas before they’re events. 

                  I am not what’s called a realist. I imagine – imagine this! – the here and now is an image of a greater truth and emanation of a hidden purpose. I know in my heart we are here for some reason and in my brain I know this is nonsense. I prize the imaginary more than actuality – or rather, I cherish the real as a route to that greater reality. My here and now glows as everywhere and always. Each life history is a story with a meaning. Seeing, for me, is the fun of being.

                  Dislodge me from my dream and I freak. I do not know who I am or where. I am not who I thought. The less anticipated my eviction, the more it hurts, the more urgent my impulse to hurt back. Steal my money, I shrug, it happens. Steal my dream and I – I – I – I know not what!

                  Reason laboriously hauls me back to sense. I absent myself from company, take a walk, try (unsuccessfully) to read. To encounter an acquaintance in such a condition is hazardous, I might spark and burn. 

                  I am being an ass, I know, I rebuke and ridicule myself, loathing my uncontrol. Such lapses are where the human world goes wrong. Get a grip.

                  I write. Words lasso my rampant temper and choke it to docility. That’s what I’m doing now. Words yank me back into the paddock of permissibility. If I can laugh at myself and make sense, better yet music, I can live again and love.

                  Literature reminds me I am not alone. 

When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes
I all alone beweep my outcast state.

That was Shakespeare. “Jesus wept” – and “Eli, eli lama sabbachtani, my God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me.” Any maker worth his salt, I’ll wager, for misery is the mother of music. “No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader,” said Frost.

                  So maybe this explosion was a blessing? (Reason can prove anything, given time.) I wouldn’t go that far! For sure, it reinforces humility, only my humility is amply fed. It stokes sympathy – for those unable to rein themselves – and gratitude I have words to see me through.