Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of our country.
It has been months since I last had an inclination to write with the intention of posting to this weblog. If pressed for a reason why, I suppose that it was because I've been resisting the temptation to contribute to the uncivil discourse taking place in online society.
Of course, it was only slightly problematic to find something to ease the pang of withdrawal from what had become the habitual monthly casting of a seemingly quite harmless missive into the widening cyberswamp that many of us poor, lost souls had found ourselves gravitating toward, pulled-in, held-fast, and perhaps, not altogether charmingly, sunken.
I had, because of an apparently incurable genetic disorder, to find another outlet for my creative impulses, another lowering activity that I believed would be of some small value during my hiatus from even this mostly tamed patch of social media. I thought about painting (no tools), or maybe drawing or cartooning (no talent); I even contemplated learning music theory and composing (not really), and writing poetry or fiction or essays (no inspiration).
What was a mind to do?
I continued to read with gusto, but for the first time in my life I found myself reading to truly escape from reality. I delved deep into Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber multiverse (10 volumes -- and still counting, post-mortem), Stephen King's seemingly bottomless body of work, and tragedies Greek and Elizabethan. Nothing, however, could keep me from returning to our ever darkening realpolitik.
I have risen from those past myths to our current familiar ones, and the constantly up-creeping, self-made, all-encompassing, bothersome, smothering fog.
A Prospero notwithstanding, there is no island refuge in sight.
And yet, cliches be damned! "Come Hell or High Water" "By Hook or By Crook" -- Today! On the gosh-darned gol-durnedest pre-dawning of this -- my 80th annual recycling! I am intent on picking up the pieces of a broken year and with the hope that only a cautious pessimism can offer, I am sending out this drear note in a dark green bottle to roil and spin upon a raging sea of troubles.
