I've reached the end of my day before the end of the day. So what do I do now? Write you, of course. There was no time earlier in the day. After my swim and breakfast I had to go and get some money to pay my cleaning lady, having spent some of her stash foolishly on TTC Tickets. Went through some papers first (always papers) to write the odd note and clip some for later filing and delivering. (I run a clipping service for a number of people.) Then, since I was going out, anyway, I ran a number of other errands (wine, produce) and enjoyed the weather - beautiful, sunny, crisp fall day.

Then I finished reading my current book, so close to the end I had to. David Mitchell (latest The Bone Clocks) is a ventriloquist, also a prophet, although that's not hard to be. Then I had a nap. then I had a second lunch (last night's leftover dinner, too good to wait any longer). and finally, I wondered what to do now.

Feeling guilty on several different counts, but not guilty enough to spur me into action. This is where my mixed emotions about my age come into play. I have lived so long and accomplished so little and yet I still have ideas and goals, though they are not what they used to be. My goals are more personal, having to do with self-discovery and analysis. What I have done (very little) or not done (even less) doesn't matter much. How many writers today, accomplished, famous ones, are going to last as long as Shakespeare? So who am I to fuss about it? But I'm still here, tired right now but I'll do something tomorrow.

How was your day?

Did you sleep all right? No matter how well or badly one sleeps, it's not usually timor mortis that keeps one awake. I think it's because we mortals can't focus for very long on our mortality and immortality is too difficult a concept to grasp.

Years ago when I was a bright, far-too-young student of literature, the academic trend was to study the work and not the author, so we knew very little if anything of the private life of the creator of the pieces we were studying. I was half-way through my Master's year, working on my thesis on W.H. Auden when I discovered by accident that he was gay. At that time, of course, homosexuality was still a taboo and illegal, but still - I should have been told.

Just recently in the past couple of years two biographies of Aldous Huxley have been published, telling me (just from the reviews; I didn't read the books) more than I ever knew about him. This is not to say I was not influenced by his writing and his thoughts. I thought he was an iconoclast and frightening and I banned myself from reading him on Sundays. (Yeah, I know, I was a nerd.) But I remember something he wrote that has stayed with me for half a century now. He said, and I can't tell you where, i.e. in what book - I read all his novels. (As I say, we studied the creation and not the creator.) But somewhere I read this line and kept it ever since:

"Man's hope is his capacity for irrelevance."

Yup. That's why I can sleep at night even after beginning my assault on the gates of eternity. (Or whatever.) Is that all there is? What next? Are you ready?

I'm not, but that's irrelevant, isn't it?