I’m dark -- for almost a dozen hours now. 

                  A miscommunication (says he politely) with our carrier. If you’re reading this, it’s been resolved. If not… let’s not go there.

                  A weird feeling, your absence. You are so much with me when I wake – whether today’s offering was tasty, what I might serve tomorrow, the responses and comments in my inbox. But now

Farewell the tranquil mind! farewell content!
Farewell the plumed troops and the big wars
That make ambition virtue! O, farewell!
Farewell the neighing steed and the shrill trump,
The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife,
The royal banner, and all quality,
Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!
And, O you mortal engines, whose rude throats
The immortal Jove’s dread clamours counterfeit,
Farewell! Othello’s occupation’s gone!

(Any chance to share Good Will, seize it!)

                  Who we are is what we do and bidding you good morning is what I do, so if I’m not doing it, who am I? Do I exist? I feel myself fading like a photo on my wall of four old friends at a party. Their faces now are almost blank. I know who they are; soon nobody will. 

                  Identity is the human mystery. It meant, in Latin, being the same – the same person today as yesterday – a peculiarly human concern. Henry wonders what the fuss is about – dogs are always the same. Humans are spooked by becoming somebody different – or nobody. 

                  And who is this identity? Not our body, surely, which won’t be the same tomorrow (I’m hoping for less of mine). Mused John Locke famously: 

Since consciousness always accompanies thinking, and ’tis that which makes every one to be what he calls self; and thereby distinguishes himself from all other thinking things, in this alone consists personal identity; i.e. the sameness of a rational being… As far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past action or thought, so far reaches the identity of that person.

In other words (though these words are pretty fine), we are who we think. What seems most real to us – who we are – we’ve imagined.

                  I imagine myself together with you, sharing a thought – smile – shudder – tear. You make me real – as Thoreau made himself real to me so many decades ago. He plopped into an easy chair in my mind and never left. Likewise Shakespeare, Bach, blessed others. Their faces may fade but not their force. Trying for such an effect became my occupation, my “plumed troops and the big wars/ that make ambition virtue.” Crazy, no? – to dream so high. But it had been done before – why not give it a try?

                  I never wanted to be a writer; I wanted to be your pal by way of writing. “Think where man’s glory most begins and ends,” wrote Yeats, “And say my glory was I had such friends.” And now, for this moment, you’ve vanished, abducted by an algorithm – only stepped out of the room, I trust – to attend to something – but what if you don’t return? Who would I be then?

                  That I – the I I call “I” – is an invention is, for me, a late discovery and curiously consoling. If I can envision this “me,” why not another – and another?  Othello’s final failure was he couldn’t accommodate himself to another vision (or version) of himself; his pride wouldn’t let him. I’m guessing if you’d barred Shakespeare from pen and paper, he’d have felt the same. I am because I think – and you are in my thoughts.

                  Come back soon.