My challenge is to recognize what I am - to perform that labor - rather than piss on (self-inclusively, of course, with occasional hints to the close reader) about what I should be.
It can be useful at such a time as this to recall my thoughts or opinions as a young man concerning writers about my current age who appeared "discontented," especially with themselves. I recall, they were loathsome to me. A man or woman of 51 surely has made of themselves what they can; if they have work, that is their legacy, good or bad or indifferent, and if they appear to be trying to justify themselves - or are carrying on more or less obviously about what they deserve (that others don't, of course), they are pathetic.
This opinion which I held at let's say 22 of people like myself who are 51 was the result of a well-rounded education in the arts and sciences. I couldn't agree more. 'nuff said.
And so, I am what I have done - which is a difficult truth to accept only in that I am not God or some weird self-signifying manly water-breathing unicorn.
Suppose or imagine then what's left to me. How about...I don't care. (Take that, me!) I can't miss. I obviously can't function or produce through want. Rather I am in a place - and what? I wil let you know when I get there. No re-makings or worried fingerings of this or that. Not silence, which signifies "shock" - no mere disconnection or lateralizations - criticism, politics, prose.
I may live alone and write three more books of poems, then die.
I would have liked that at 22.
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