PERSONAL NEWS
LOOKS IDYLLIC! BUT THE DAMN THING IS HOLED BELOW THE WATERLINE.
(A METAPHOR FOR SOMETHING?)
BUT DOES THAT MATTER WHEN IT LOOKS SO FINE?
I seem finally to be getting to the heart of this project. My mental picture is of a building site—liberally littered with builder’s rubble—which I am finally beginning to clear up. The house I have built isn’t sold yet—or even quite finished—but it is beginning to look less like a work in progress—which, observers think, will never get finished—and more like a viable proposition.
When I got into all this, back in mid 2010, I had absolutely no idea of its complexity, how long it would take—or the degree to which I would change almost everything about how I work (and live) over the years since then. All in all, it has been an exceedingly difficult time in numerous ways—materially, emotionally, and in terms of health—but immensely rewarding.
I don’t think an aspect of my character has been left unchallenged. I guess I both expected this—and wanted it to happen—but the reality has been brutal, and has brought me right to the edge. Hard to face one’s own weaknesses and failures. Hard to continue under such circumstances.
Harder still to stop after so much sunken effort. In truth, that is a damn fool reason for continuing—it is why wars drag on for so long—but the real reason I intend to see this through, despite enough setbacks to rival Job—is that I have the strongest feeling that this can and will succeed.
I also have the sense that this whole quest is making me stronger. Of course, fundamentally, I must be failing (in that such is a byproduct of aging)—and both calendar and mirror remind me constantly of that reality—but, injuries apart, I feel both mentally and physically fitter and stronger (by quite a margin) than I did when I embarked on all this.
A sense of purpose is a force to be reckoned with—and almost frightening, in its unremitting intensity at times. It is also a wonderful thing. Mind you, it is somewhat Calvinist in tone—so a sense of humor does not go amiss.
As some will know, I had a small part in helping to nurse a friend of friend, as she—Jo Curran—was dying of an aggressive cancer. Jo was feisty to the end (while we stood around her bed, she killed herself under Washington State’s Death with dignity Act)—and I think of her often. She had Albert Einsten’s famous quote on her fridge—and it now adorns mine. It reads.
“Only those who attempt the absurd achieve the impossible.”
I have been told point blank that what I am endeavoring to do is absurd—and impossible. Indeed, harsher language has been used.
My critics miss the fundamental point. As with writing, the endeavor itself is the thing.
VOR words 460
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