All there is?

 

Oct. 4, 2012

 

If this is all there is, then I’ll take it.

Puffed up clouds ride the blue sky over head on this stark morning, each beyond my reach – like a daydream.

I try to read them the way gypsies read tea leaves, but I have not that gift.

The Hudson is stiff with the masts of sail boats, each boasting a full breeze that sends them up stream despite the changing current.

To be master of our fate, to decide where life takes us, to have – as Faulkner once pointed out – and to have not is what life is really all about.

I am not a sea master, barely master of my own boat, cast this way and that by changing tides as the seasonal lick of waves touches me, and I move whim takes me, not will.

The two often conflict, where I should go and where I do go, what I should do, but don’t.

I walk along the Hoboken side like a ghost lost at sea, never quite able to put my feet back onto solid ground, always subject to a sudden shift of wind.

I thought I knew where things were, and I find I know nothing.

But if this is all there is, I have to take it – and be satisfied.