"The Sequence of Events"

The title a phrase that seemed to lodge itself in my head mid-way through the Hip documentary tonight.  Reflecting on last summer and the two concerts.  Reflecting on the inspiration of the Kerouac scroll and the Open Road's 60th from last month.  Reflecting on 1280 and lives past as you host an old unrecognizable roomate law student at the firm, and others in class.  Reflecting on career and destinations with Matt over Chinese food at the Wall, dreaming of the first return since 2009 and the first months of the thirties.  The sequence of events.  That has led to this point.  The point of no returning.  The point of reckoning.  The point of divergence.  The point where the levee breaks, the leap is taken.

"We want to be it."

The poet returning, at the right time.  Enough time, to sort matters, to make it happen.  The first step with the Bark.  Then the acceptance at King's to force things.  The sale of the condo.  The purchase of the writing shack.  The start of a commitment to art.  To creating, something (in this time of destruction):

"That night, in a letter, she wrote: 'After the bare requisites to living and reproducing, man eats most to leave some record of himself, a proof, perhaps, that he has really existed.  He leaves his proof on wood, on stone or on the lives of other people.  This deep desire exists in everyone, from the boy who writes dirty words in a public toilet to the Buddha who etches his image in the race mind.  Life is so unreal.  I think that we seriously doubt that we exist and go about trying to prove that we do."

Those Steinbeck lines.  The Chaplin perfection.  The near end of the sailing season.  The Magdalens and Ottawa to come.  The mentor and teaching and board chairmanship all wrapping up as year end approaches.  All telescoping into and toward that one perfect Hemingway paragraph, as you try to get it right.

All these events.  The sequencing of them.  Brewing.  Culminating.  The biggest of decisions, the choice of and for full freedom, no regrests, made possible because of time and necessity.  Without a mind to the long term, and yet with the far-away eyes on the longest term.  Everything guiding you along to that moment, perhaps.  The end is in the beginning, and all that.  Toward a search for words that sing made possible only by the cutting loose of ties.  It can and will and must be done.

The wheels, Babu.  The wheels are in motion.  Don't get distracted from the goal.  When you are so near the end.