like a rolling stone

First you've got to get in the shit. And then maybe you can come back and sing it. (Keith Richards, Life)

This quote makes it sound like Keith, at 66, has pulled out of the game. Evidence pro: He wrote an autobiography. (It tolls for thee, Keith Richards.) Evidence contra: he's talking with Mick about getting together for another round. (Though Stones reunions have kind of become like my grandpa's college reunions, in that the number of people who find these events significant is rapidly decreasing.)

My faith in medical science might be overreaching, but I can't help protesting against resignation so early. Writing a book called Life at the age of 66? From Keith Richards, especially--the amount and intensity of what he has survived should promote a sanguine expectation of staying in the shit, at least for another ten years.

Or could it be that he's tapping out? Maybe he's eager for the blanket and slippers.

Socrates asserts that the unexamined life is not worth living. (Most distinctly in the Apology, if you wanted to know.) But does unrestricted examination qualify as a life? He didn't say the "unexamined self", you notice. If you stop being the self you were while you were living, life keeps happening around you. You have to keep up if you're going to examine it. Socrates also said that he only knew that he knew nothing (Republic). Does that not indicate that life well-examined should result in doubts of your examination's validity? ἔμοιγε δόκει.

The smart guys in school used to infuriate me with the way they sat apart from everyone, discussing in mutters and making notes in their Moleskines, responding only to each other's remarks during class discussion. Once satisfied that you're on the right track, you stop looking around, and you're liable to miss things. God help me if I spend all my time on hindsight, at the expense of seeing.

Is it unavoidable that we should live only the first eighty percent of our days, and resign the last twenty percent to examination? Couldn't we do both forever? Or is that privilege reserved for heaven?

the truest sentence you know

i asked K to remind me to write today. it won't just happen on its own. there is prayer, and there is faith, but there is also faithfulness, which is work. i mean to have some discipline.

she reminded me. she cheered for me. i sat down to work in the sun room.

it has been raining for days--a nuisance and a miracle, in this part of the world. the hills look like mountains, when it's raining. it makes a voyage out of going to work at six in the morning, so that it's almost a pleasure.

the sun room is full of tobacco-stained light. the couch is full of pillows and a blanket. fresh off the impetus of K's cheering, i stand in the doorway and think, "how did i get here?" i don't understand.

ernest hemingway said that the cure for writer's block is to write the truest sentence you know. but i have never yet found that sentence. does that mean that i don't know what i believe? how upsetting--i might have writer's block forever.

after an hour or so, as i stared at the retarded grunts i had accomplished, shades fell over my mind. i went to sleep.

i woke up feeling as if years had passed. i woke up staring at my Bible. and i thought, "i need to understand." i can't write until i do understand. i'm going on strike.

there's a verse i read a few months ago in jeremiah that says "let him who boasts boast in this: that he understands and knows me."

writing is the most boastful activity that i know. i'm pretty sure that is why i don't tell people who i am--i feel that i don't deserve it. and i don't understand anything.

i pulled myself off the couch. in the other room, K is sleeping on the other couch. her hair is splayed across the pillow. last night she went to the emergency room, one more time. i don't understand. i shake my fist, though timidly, at God. i don't understand. and i need to. i can't write fiction until i start understanding something about life. this isn't a strike. it's a handicap. i'm crippled, so it doesn't matter if i want to get across the room or across the world.

i've found the truest sentence i know. but it hasn't cured anything except my ambition.