BLAZE

A wondering weekend. Another experience of watching a thing that will not be repeated. Plus ca change...

But this: someone, anyone, please explain to me how my marital status is the business of ANYBODY other than my very self?

It is sad, or perhaps terrifying, to watch ourselves age, to observe the potential of youth hewn down to the solidity of our cells. Who may I yet be? I cannot know. But the universe must know that I will cry myself hoarse before I recant who I am. I will remember that I am a grasshopper and happy, not an ugly ant milking the aphids. That my life is greater than a big house and a garden-in-a-box, three squares and a little more, all the right wines in my cellar, a screen that reflects the banality of man unkind, a thousand playthings and no joy. That my purpose is beauty, that I serve the world and not the other way around, that a thought, a dream, is the only lasting value I can possess. What shall it profit a man, after all?

... taking whatever they get — I don't want to wind up like that ...

So I will wear sandals when it pleases me. Even to the marriage of my true mind, if that be my preference. And more. I will learn to speak pirate. I will eat berries newly washed by the night as the sun rises on my morning. I will let the wind braid my hair and the sun adorn my skin. I will rave on. Bring on the windmills: I am for them. It is only utterly who I must be.

So save me from the smugness of the trust fund, the well-planned retirement, the right opportunity at the right moment. Save me from being elderly at thirty-three. Save me from the rightness of this life, for I am sure I would die of it. You cannot, sir, take from me anything that I will more willingly part withal ...

Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye. I wish you well.

... looking back over my shoulder at you happy without me ...

Meanwhile ...

Now reading: Angle of Repose. Firewing. More preparatory materials. And a large bag of fine novels tempts me hourly: Byatt, Doyle, Drabble, Irving, King, Urquhart. Soon, soon.

You can already see what I like and do not like for today. What a drag, what a drag, what a drag. Hmph. Zak is in Brooks and I miss him. Many of my friends are travelling. Soon I may too. But until then I'm sitting, letting it in, letting it go, letting it in, letting it go ...

L