Not about babies or Sadie

The truth of the matter is if I had to do it all over again, the whole mess of emotions and hours, and laughter, and conversation and silence, my god the silences, endless things. And beyond even that, the conversations, the banality of the everyday chit chat with folks that passes for existence, the truth of the matter is that I wouldn't do any of it all over again.

Why if I was the good Lord myself, I guess that I'd have taken one look at the universe and pronounced it good without changing a damn thing. I know. I know. It seems a strange complaint coming from someone on the other side of all the oblivions that we call night and day. I'd take a ship, if I could, like Noah, except instead of filling it with all of the animals, I'd fill it with nothing. I'd scrub the wood down to bare bones. I'd disinfect every last chance of it, to make certain that wherever I was going that I was doing it alone. I'd kill off as many germs in my mouth as I could. I'd take laxatives. Too far, you say. Not far enough, I'd answer. And I'd leave on a quiet morning, the sun putting ribbons of light through the clouds, and I'd head west, because explorers always head west. I wouldn't wave goodbye to anyone on shore for fear they'd hail me, ask me which way I thought the wind might blow or whether I might like some coffee, or maybe offer up a little tip on just how to tack properly. My god how I abhor the company of others!

I'd make way for an uninhabited island if the good Lord was good enough to provide one. I've never quarreled with plants or water, so I would not begrudge the presence of either on that faraway island. One suspects that I am only now enumerating something that the monks and poets have known for ages, that old love song we gathered up from our moderns: "Til human voices wake us and we drown." It is the same thing that drove Thoreau to Walden and likely the same thing that drove the good Lord to allow himself to be sent back to heaven. It is finished indeed.

I hear you now friend, whispering to me through all those thousands of miles of lines that connect us. I'll leave the term alone for the time being. You're reminding me of that night on the coast of Maine when we played cards and talked about all the places we'd like to go. I wish that I was there, I tell you, and you sound so confused. But certainly, dear friend, you were not there either. What is man but matter? And as Thales stated long ago, and I'm sure quite rightly you'd have to give him if you've stood yourself on a lonely cliff and stared out at the sea, all matter is composed of water. And so, dear friend, am I. How could I ever be anything at all?

Certainly the Lord did not kill everyone or else we'd have a race of inbreeds. Maybe they were just briefly swallowed up, the wicked not on the arc, those Egyptians crossing the Red Sea, before being washed clean and spat back out upon the shores of life. Certainly no conclusion is otherwise logical. How else to explain the fact that I nearly dissolved when we first touched. We are merely water, here one moment and gone the next. And I hear you reminding me that I said that no person could ever change. And listen closely, dear friend, for Paremenides was only partially mistaken, it is not the world that is unchanging, it is us, our souls and bodies. Do not the waves ceaselessly beat at the same shores like man upon his habits? Zeno reminds us both that all good philosophy is paradox.

But certainly this has all been said before. And all I really need is a quiet cabin in the woods in which to practice my own version of repentance, and two billion people to leave me alone.