Gnothi Seauton

Saturday, November 25, 2006
5:35pm

I’ve just finished by third novel this month. Not bad for someone who spends every other night out, and hours everyday ‘working’. But the problem is the novel I just finished was selected and read in hopes of finding something pure and less than cynical. It didn’t entirely work out as I had hoped. But perhaps the plan of reading an abridged satire in the guise of a story of high adventure and romance was inherently flawed. My desire for a purely Hollywood ending was blunted by the blade of sarcasm. Maybe I should simply turn to Hollywood for that.

I had a little moment of crisis today. I realized that another of my friends seems to be on the way to parenthood. It’s not that the notion of personally having children terrifies me (well it sort of does, it’s just another thing to fail at, but what a potentially massive and horrific failure!), it’s just that it’s another step in the inevitable march towards ‘adulthood’, that strange and indefinable country whose borders are externally declared, and internally denied. Time marches on without pause or consideration for preparation. And of course there’s no reason why I shouldn’t be prepared, after all it’s not like I’m not at all familiar with the process. And yet…

I think that’s one definition of insanity – performing the same action and expecting a different result each time. So the thing is, why can’t I set a course, a series of small increments that lead towards a pre-established goal? Why can’t I, in the absence of something great and sweeping, something to which I can devote body and soul to, find satisfaction in procedural rationality? It is the great void, the sea of darkness across which questions, accusations and epithets are hurled, never to return, never is the softest scrap of echo heard, that confronts me, silent as the grave. The ridiculous thing is that all of these things happen entirely in one’s own private little universe. But I suppose it’s what most of us wrestle with.

Really, I suppose that all of the sniveling is sort of pathetic.

Is it crunch time? Have I “seen my moment of greatness flicker… Seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker”? Is it time to “get busy livin’ or get busy dyin’”? Livin’ is better. Just gotta figure out the next carrot.

Maybe that is enough. Happiness is not a goal, it is a journey. Does anyone know where I can get a job writing fortune cookie fortunes? If Homer (Simpson) can do it, why can’t I?