Imminent Death

There's nothing quite so powerful as being reminded that we're all going to die.

I was walking downtown on my lunch break yesterday (my first day of teaching - more on that eventually), when a piece of paper on the sidewalk caught my eye. It was a Xeroxed essay, entitled "Write Till You Drop." I picked it up.

"Write as if you were dying," says the author, Annie Dillard, "At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case."

Yup. It sure is. We're all going to die.

She goes on: "What would you begin writing if you knew you were going to die soon? What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality?"

I've been sitting with these questions ever since. And I will continue to do so, hopefully, with some result by the next entry. All I know right now is, the writing I've been doing for this blog has been getting a little stale.

I've got another two months before I move in with J~, and I don't want to spend the meantime pining over and over for the day, or fearing it, or speculating about whether or not we'll ever truly get there. We'll get there, and it's going to be fine.

Nor do I want to continue to regurgitate the same worn out fears about recurring miscarriage and the perils of parenthood. Though I did give myself a good sobering scare last night reading a slew of bloggers reporting imminent fourth and fifth miscarriages. Why me? They cry, and I know, Why not me, too? But worrying doesn't help.

I have to shower now. I'm teaching today too.

This weekend, I'll spend some time with J~ and B~, and with my family (my brother, D~, is in town from California).

Maybe by Monday I'll have something new to say.

Happy weekend everybody.