03.1.11

I could spend my life doing anything, but I spend most of it working with a computer, designing programs, writing code that queries databases. I live with a level of complexity that I can barely comprehend and in no way do I like. My mind is often fretted with details, minute details, upon which these data structures are reliant and which, though mathematically and logically clear, don't resonate at all with me, the unfortunate human being sitting at the computer.

At the moment I am sitting in the front room of my house. It is what once would have been called the sitting room or living room. Odd names, because it is a room that past generations would have kept quite neat and separate from daily familial goings-on. It would have been kept so to receive visitors, and to foster the pretext of formality, whether it was present or not, liked or not. We, of course, like many or even most of our generation do not bother with such formalities. Too many lines in our society have been blurred for us to think it important to present a tidied-up, antiseptic version of our house to visitors. Usually visitors never come to this room. 

Yet it is a lovely room. I call it the conservatory. There are, after all, at the moment, two pianos and two guitars and a library of books on subjects ranging from poetry to history to religion to music that is comprised of at least 400 volumes. I have read some. Look to read others. Some I'll never touch. Time is short.

It is late afternoon, a little past 4:00 in early March, and we've had a long winter of it. Snow fell as recently as yesterday. I've been ill. My wife and children have been ill. Almost everyone we know has been ill. My mother-in-law recently died after a long bout with dementia and a fall that initiated a precipitous decline through surgeries, a nursing home, and finally death.

It has been a long winter.

Not one, however, without joys. That's the thing of it. Only rarely is life completely devoid of joy. Even when I was sick a few days ago, and feeling quite rough, my daughter climbed into bed with me and gave me a hug and said, "You're as warm as a bunny." I hope I never forget that. I gave it some thought as I laid in the bed that day, alternately burning up and freezing, drifting in and out of sleep, dreaming in code and guitar scales, hearing music in my mind that I could never produce with my hands, and it gave me pause. It reminded me of how short time really is. It reminded me that soon enough, too soon, I will be the one getting sick for the the final time, and that I will be the one declining toward the grave. By mortality tables I am better than halfway there as it is.

And so I am left wondering, as I sit in this room and watch the sunlight glide magnificently out of clouds, filling the room with a warmth that has nothing to do with heat, why am I writing code and not writing words in English for others to read? How long shall I wait to write?