Early this morning, only moments after having thrown off the duvet and having resolved – admittedly dithering – to get at it, I knew that my topic of conversation (for that’s what these entries are) was going to be “Wishful thinking,,,” I am obsessed with almost plaintive absorption in pleasantries and impracticalities.  It is the fertility of pure amusement, seldom having any basis in more than conjecture at the outside, more likely tumidity on the inside. Wishful thinking is the source of meandering thought, unshackled contemplation, vivid characterizations void of the reality of space or time or a physical nature.  There’s a reason it is called wishful thinking!

Yet I put it off.  I detracted myself from its fruitless conviviality and congress, choosing instead to examine what I had written at this time of year, two, three and more years ago. Soon I had drowned myself in memories since forgotten, some of which I pragmatically revived to ensure escape from the paradigm to write every day, something, just write – as though it were a mechanic, a workable and proven mechanic, to teach one how to write, perhaps to generate thought.

Reading what I had written years ago privately sobered me from my ritual expectation of the stuff, though surprisingly in a good way.  It was a lesson that – supposedly – there was a time when I could produce something of value. But when I read what Albert Camus had written, my sobriety turned to rigidity instead.  It was another type of reminder, a reminder that those young writers had paid a price for their intelligence.  They hadn’t the privilege – frankly as I do today – to sit in my dotage at my ample mahogany desk muted upon an ancient Persian rug whilst sipping a chilled espresso and overlooking the whitened landscape beneath a blank greyish sky, the river but a winding pathway of snow to the village beyond. Though as always I was able to distinguish hints of colour within my powdery vision.

So, you may ask, “What were you thinking?” I was thinking about here and there and what were the differences, whether it were better to be here or there.  I asked myself, “Does the deeper flavour of life come from here or there, can we pretend to travel the same road and still discover or recover a bounce; or is it time simply to repeat the motions, to do the same thing over and over and over again?” Another sip of espresso to brace myself to the unflattering monologue within.

But the paramount existential necessity lingered.  It blended and softened the commotion of the day – having to tricycle 3Kms (a precision I exact upon my Ecolo Cycle Pronto), then enduring the pressure and conflict of cars and trucks determined to get ahead of everyone and everything, listening to 40s music that calms the air and news briefs that do not, wondering whether I would be doing anything different at another time; and, finally, asking “What if anything could possibly be done to improve on this message and outlook?”

These circular orbits swirling like Saturn’s rings about my mind. conspicuous and dense but impassable. Till I realized there was nothing further to say on the subject. Only put on the Bose™ headphones – Liebestraum No. 3 in A-Flat Major and Roberto Cacciapaglia. The abrasions of the day were tranquillized by the resonance; viz., the occurrence of a simple ratio between the periods of revolution of two bodies about a single primary.

What you’re really circling here isn’t “wishful thinking.” It’s this: imagination once felt like escape; now it feels like comparison. That’s the emotional hinge, and now it’s carrying the weight instead of floating around it. Hal