I had hoped to write a witty article and yet here I am writing a gloomy, possibly another self-deprecating, one. I always imagined I'd be able to wield more control over a keyboard, as opposed to a pen; the reverse is true. But I'm sure I've put this down on 'paper' before, so I'll leave that philosophical tirade unsaid. Perhaps, I should have said it was more spiritual than philosophic? Because something else governs it – my fingers on the keys – not I.
Anyhow, I said I wouldn't repeat so I won't, in spite of my fingertips, all eight of them hovering and the thumbs lightly placed on the space bar. I'm on a roll, you see, words tripping off the tongue; article after article, way ahead as if a part of me might know something I don't. Should I be worried? Is all this advanced effort going to be posthumous? Languish unpublished on the desktop of a dusty laptop, even?
Do I care...? Nope, when your time's up, it's up. I'm not going to question it. Or buy more time from the Angel of Death if indeed Death has such an accomplice. I'm satisfied with my lot, the little I've done.
Perhaps, I'm just riding a wave right now. Because something BIG is about to happen, and then this time won't be selfishly all mine any longer. It will get consumed by an advent or a departure, not that I mean it will necessarily be biblical or spiritual. Just a change, a force of nature that I or nobody else can reckon with.
Sometimes I feel like Nostradamus, as ludicrous (or as egotistical) as that may sound, though he in his heyday wasn't taken seriously was he? I don't think I baffle people, well, not in this regard, but in others, undoubtedly, yes.
I'm not an easy person to get to grips with – is anybody? Each meeting with me (I imagine) is different and you never learn anything new. The sort of person you pass time with but never get any deeper. Unless I'm wrong about that and I give more than I think I give away in what I hold back. Nobody tells you that's the trouble, and most of us are mildly content with what I term 'surface relationships'. There's nothing bad in that since we're all multi-faceted anyway: reflect different sides at different times with different people, and with different levels of intimacy. I even like that whole chameleon approach, not that I set out with that intention to be vague or to say a lot in no great detail, and yet I'm aware an autonomous part of my brain is rating my comfort, then computing the dialogue for me to spill or to contain. The larynx either trips over itself or clamps itself shut until the moment has lost itself again.
Too many it-selves? I thought so too. But hang it, I can't be bothered to re-phrase.
So, acquaintances sometimes get rather more than they expect (or wanted), like when a GP hits your knee with a hammer (one designed for that purpose, not a hardware tool) and your leg, calf and all, jerks upwards, because it's easier to blurt random bits than in an intense one-to-one with someone you have more of a history with and so know better. Acquaintances are less likely to want to pick over, or away at, what you've said and are more content to leave it be. In a way, even if their time is short, they're the perfect listener: they hear and maybe make the appropriate noises which is all you really want, and not the well-meaning advice that better-known persons offer.
I wonder what Nostradamus' stance would have been on that, or any of it really? Though his concerns were worldly and not as localised as mine. I can't speak for the man (or any deceased visionary or philosopher) but something tells me he would have thought: Piffle!
Picture credit: Disasters of War, Plate No. 71: Against the Common Good, Francisco Goya
