It has become an uphill slog of gory hand to hand combat to write. To force fleeting flickers of thoughts to coalesce into lamps of luminous prose. And it's not a block. A lump of wall between the world of words and i. It is the i in i.
i just don't see the point.
Lately i think a lot about finishing. A conversation with Jeff the Elder in which we lamented and he said something that my mind remembers as, "there is a dearth of men finishing well." Ending their lives as firm and as solid and as noble as they began them. There is a falling off which happens. An inward curvature. A parabolic arc that turns the man upon himself, inward, selfish, low. As if we all, like Gollum, bury ourselves beneath the mountain, far from eyes, far from light, far from anyone and anything we need to care about. Hobbies become obsessive. My precious.
Depending on how you measure it, i am either in the last third of my life or the very middle. i think of life in terms of twenties. Scores. The first Score: birth and childhood. The second Score: marriage, family, raising my sons. i am in the third Score now, what is it? What's its purpose? What is its mission? Does it have one or can that only be determined in hindsight? Mid-life crisis? Would we have the stereotype if it weren't true? To me this score is the last of my productive years. Anything beyond sixty is bonus round. But the life i've lived will most likely make it a wasteland of the physical. My body won't be up for another twenty by then. If i follow in the footsteps of some of my forebears, my mind won't either. So i don't hold out much hope for a fourth movement (though who knows? Moses did ALL of his work from eighty to one twenty). This is it. This is the time you have allotted to you.
How shall you spend it? What shall you do?
i feel the deck heave beneath me. The world at large and personal is a Titanic in her death throws. Nothing holds together. i can hear the screams of the metal as it tears away and it mixes with the fear of the dying. What is yet worth doing? Is there anyone listening? Anyone i can give a life preserver to? Should i just sit here and draw the bow along the cello until the deep closes over? Would anyone draw strength from the music? Would i?
Is it enough to be the last DJ on the overnight, graveyard broadcast, playing his songs as the stars fall? Pappy Fricken here, your shepherd through the pilgrim's progress of the long, dark night of the soul. The last watchman on the wall, talking to the crickets and the katydids. "Watchman, what of the night?" they cry, "Watchman, what of the night?" Morning comes and also the night, i would answer. If you would inquire, inquire. Come back again to WHUT, playing your musical score to accompany the end of the world. Saying never forget, never forget, Salvation before Revelation, my friends, crickets and katydids. The end is only a new beginning and you don't want to miss the next world. It's going to be the one you thought this one should be. One worth writing about. Come Lord Jesus, come!
