2003-11-17-4:16 p.m.
My teacher wrote this, as usual the things I like I post here. Enjoy!

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The Ari Files

-a weekly column (updated every Monday)

(www.arifiles.com)

Date: November 16, 2003

Category: Gone Fishing

The following was first published to the web on August 13, 2001.

"Beginnings"

(musings to my children for when they are older.)

There should never be an end of beginning. Of making beginnings. It's life and death.

Now, of course, an argument might be made that such statements are worthless. There are always beginnings. Each day, each hour, each turbo-charged instant is a beginning. The present does not exist except as a border between what is gone and what has begun. Besides, we have no choice in the matter of where we take ourselves. Our footsteps are laid before us.

Maybe so. There are always arguments, shaky and sound, against choice: destiny, God's will, genetic predisposition or, in extremis, predetermination. In the universe of billiard ball causality, the trajectory of each and every one of us was mapped at the Big Bang. We can shout in protest. We can flap our arms or stand rigid in chesty defiance. We can learn to bite. Drink dirty water. Sleep in Dada's hollow log. Howl at the end of our chains. But these and all other behaviors are born of a merely apparent volition. They are etched in plated charts beyond the comprehension of our flimsy wits.

And I, returning the ball, must say, "So what?" It doesn't matter. Yes, the game may be rigged, but we cannot know that it is or how much it is with certainty. So we must act as though we have choice, at least in some things. What is the alternative? To stand and wait? To do nothing? Should we, each of us, sit on a rock, damning the illusion of our yearning hearts and give no thought to the direction in which we might rise?

No. Not for me. Any direction is better than that. The thing is to rise. Whether or not the initiative is actually yours, take it for your own. Just let it be done. Even were your brain to suddenly develop a vast consciousness capable of objectifying the workings of the universe, and you saw that indeed the lines of every motion, grand and tiny, are cemented in formulae, you must act as though you are free to do so. In the end, it is what you have. It is who you are. It is life. And should life be an illusion, give it to me all the same. I'll take it. Don't bother to wrap it up, I'll eat it here.

These are murky waters.

It's just that there are always reasons not to act. To hesitate. To procrastinate. To not do what you have in your mind and heart to do. Squatting on that rock will just buy you a sore ass. You can call it fate, or you can call it foolishness. Either way, your ass is sore. My advice is to get up. Right away. Leave the interpretation to others with time on their hands.

Put aside philosophizing on the "circle of creation." Put aside circles. They're traps. Dead ends in the guise of infinity. You must assume you will not pass this way again. In the absence of contradictory evidence, you must.

Put aside the straight line as well. Forget the fated end. A straight line is a forced march. Life lurks in tangents.

Do not weep over lost time. There is never enough time. I know that oh so well. "I can't do this, because I must do that," is something we all say. Nothing can change that there is only the amount of time there is, which is all the time in the world. Drink your portion freely and to the bottom. Careful not to gulp. You want the full taste. And if some gets spilled for laughter's sake, so be it. Just don't let it sit in the glass too long. Don't let it sour in the bottle.

My dears, Noah and Kez, you are the best excuse I've had in a long time for not getting things done. And I don't mean that raising you is inconsequential. You awe me. You make a poem of my waking hours, and I love being with you. You must know that.

But there are things every person must do for himself or herself. To fulfill a sense of identity. To feel fully dimensioned in and of the world. To keep moving and growing because those are signs of life, and I want you children to have a living father for as long as I can make it so.

Sometimes a leap is necessary. Full throttle and into darkness. Sometimes a strategy will do instead. Like The Ari Files has been for me. It has kept me writing. Although the moments husbanded for the task are frequently few, I get it done with good regularity. Do you see? I began it as little more than an exercise of determination. Every week I begin it again. This week marks the first anniversary, and it has become something I'm glad to pull off.

I am a writer because I write. In the same way that fatherhood comes from fathering. This is the way it is with all the things I am.

A painter who puts down the brush ceases to be a painter. Accolades for works done do not change that. Painters paint. Good or bad, it's the same: composers compose, doctor's doctor, salespeople sell, politicians politic.

By "doing" we call ourselves into being. It isn't farfetched to say that we are always pregnant with ourselves. Push. I recommend it. If you want your life, you have to do it. Get up. Pick a direction and move in it. Any direction is better than none. Any direction will do, because that is where life is. That is not a secret shared. It's a promise.

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