"My present wealth stands atop almost endless reconsidering."

You makes yer choice and takes yer chances. Beginning, one never knows where their journey might end. The best of intentions (as if anyone could discern 'best' from any preliminary set of choices) won't guarantee much more than a temporary cessation of stasis, if that. One moves toward a presumption of forward, hoping that purpose might somehow emerge from the cloud of initiation. "Here we go again," I subvocalize, though I know this start won't qualify as a do-over or even a genuine new beginning. This tension seems familiar, though, and a certain reassurance accompanies it. I've grown increasingly familiar with the unfamiliar, and even the completely novel carries some patterns I recognize, or imagine I recognize, from some time before.

I proposed Reconsidering as the underlying theme of my considering this quarter. I was at the time teetering on the forward edge of Christmas, beginning my annual poem cycle, uncertain of my capacity to complete the blessed damned thing, as usual. The result surprised and delighted me, as usual, though the outcome seemed in no way pre-ordained. It was blood, sweat, and fears hounding me every step of the way, as easy as falling out of an airplane with the intention of inventing a parachute on the way down. I'm no aeronautical engineer. Gravity informs me more than does levity. My inherent gravity seems inexhaustibly capable of producing fresh levity, however. If only I could believe.

The Grand Other, our now nine year old granddaughter, insists that unicorns are real because she believes in them, a form of logic not entirely lost on me. I inventory my own beliefs and find them at least as real as any unicorn, but hardly more so. Still, I stand atop them, beginning another series of public contemplations, ruminating on this human's condition. I revisited several of my past beliefs over the last quarter, checking in and checking up on them. I've touted many ideas in my time, intending only a few of them to carry a relevant range much beyond the immediate moment. I don't know what's coming next. Heck, I hardly know what just passed. I collect impressions like a four year old collects sea shells, astounded by each discovery and quickly forgetting each recent salvation. My reconsidering fit this same pattern. I looked back to jinn up that fresh discovery experience again. Who I was might end up being who I am.

I stand by my Seven Ethical Responsibilities, even though they have grown into eight now. I revisited my earlier interest in project management and found little residual attraction. I found for myself more reasons to appreciate my earlier convictions rather than to demonize them. We're all still little kids in big people bodies, endlessly mistaken and so endlessly forgivable. Each approximation might not sum to better, but it sums to something. I speculate and therefore am. Should I hesitate to speculate, I'm simply not anymore. The Muse long ago abandoned the right/wrong dichotomy, replacing it with right/left. It's not who's right and who's wrong, but who's right and who's left. Being right all the time might be the best way to get left behind, or to leave one's self behind.

The Reconsidering was its own purpose. Reconsidering IS its own purpose. By the end of the extended exercise, I find myself refreshed, less fearful of the inevitable loss of my once-timeless wisdom. That wisdom fit its time and remains mostly worthy of filling in the fallow time between Christmas and the real new year, the long-awaited first day of Spring. A full moon, the whole Super Worm Equinox Moon will rise tonight after a specular nearly full preview this morning. This valley, the valley of my youth, holds me like the recently temporarily lost child I remain, big people body notwithstanding. I reliably find myself lost each Christmas, dreading the ensuing months of darkness and cold. I also, so far, reliably find myself reborn on the subsequent first day of Spring, awakening from that annual reliable anticipation of bad dreams which just as reliably turn out to not be even half as terrible as I anticipated they most certainly would be.

I thrived in my memories, in my Reconsidering. I dredged up past dreams to assuage my concern that I might no longer be capable of conjuring up fresh ones. Those past dreams weren't really past. They moved into the present the instant I reflected upon them. I could carry away a fresh learning from this experience, though I know for certain that even the freshest insight will certainly soon slip to nearer the bottom of the bag and be forgotten there. Life does not accumulate, no matter how much experience one fancies themselves to have gathered. It slips easily through even the grasping hand, not lost but also not long held. No great tragedy lurks there. My present wealth stands atop almost endless reconsidering.

©2019 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Reconsidering , #PureSchmaltz