If your buddy forgets to tie off and drops an outboard in the drink, not my outboard or my buddy you realize, but an example told me this week, what is the right thing to think when in actual sight of about three hundred foot of sea water between you and a thousand or more dollars, now plummeting to the bottom?
The long view to take is as follows: being in what passes for my right mind, I agree to carry on in life, to keep doing the small and large things, to open and close drapes daily and to remove grinds from the gold coffee filter. I shall maybe manage to keep one or two folk amused and to sow confusion from time to time among others who could be thought to deserve it. I'll encourage inclusion where this can be found. I propose to keep putting on trousers correctly, to consider the uses of enchantment and upright deportment, to glory in all beauty and occasional eccentricity. I expect to remain slightly behind with my list of chores. At some indeterminate moment death will set out by boat to the island which Shakespeare says no man is. The man's wrong. There's no getting around the fact that we face death alone, standing on a rocky shore watching as that figure in yellow fishing gear, just across the water, prepares. But here's the point: once in a while even the most experienced boatman drops a motor.
David Ritchie, Portland, Oregon ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
