My life is thought. I wake to see and say. This is how I spend my time. Everything else I do is to do this. I love, sleep, eat, read and play to see and say. It is all I want to do. I intend to do it as long as strength and chance permit. Whenever I’m kept from doing it, I wilt like a cut flower. I say I live to love and that is true but seeing and saying are my way of loving.

This is not and never has been a career or even a choice. I started needing to when I was sixteen and my dad died and the need never quit. I had worldly and emotional ambitions but in strength none matched this. Saying mattered more than being heard. I feel close to others who’ve felt the same compulsion – Montaigne, Thoreau, Emily Dickinson. I love to be heard, but if I weren’t I’d still be, like Emily, consigning my soul to a secret trunk. I’m convinced I was sent to earth to do this, knowing this is nonsense.

I do not know why this is and, while I’m curious, I don’t much care. If diagnosed as a disease, I would not want to be cured. I love my need. It directs me like a star, tugs me like a leash. ‘Tis a gift, as the song says.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free,’Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,And when we find ourselves in the place just right,’Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

And if I could not see and say, what then?

One day health may prevent me. Nearing 75, I’m short of time. I hope to be erased in medias res, die with my boots on, but rarely are our exits scripted. If struck mute I’d endure for those who love me, not for myself. I owe them that.

But what if law prevents me? What if, as our present government has urged, freedom of expression is forbidden as treacherous to the state, punishable by imprisonment or death? I never thought this before. I’ve lived my whole life freer than almost any prior human to see and say, so free I never feared for my freedom. Many great makers scribbled in perilous secret, steering clear of censors and hangmen. There have been limits to what I could see and say, both legal and moral, but they never constrained me. If my thoughts were unpublishable, I could still see and say in private. That right was sacrosanct.

But what if the present government seized power and imposed their will on all? What would I do?

I’ve boasted I would never abandon America. My life, memory, language, and loved ones are here – impossible! I woke just now to the realization that boast was empty. I would have to leave – one way or another: either emigrate to a safe haven or exit to the safest haven of all, where one no longer cares because one no longer exists. This is not melodramatic, but realistic. If kept from seeing and saying while I was still able, I’d die. Escape would be my only alternative.

Mine is a special case. Many would go along with the new regime, for their needs are different. They’d make their peace. I could not because for me the price of peace would be my reason to be. It shocks me to think this. How did we come to such a pass?