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An Extraordinary Day
by Earl Coleman

Our irksome, misremembering will to power, is quieted where quiet is ennobled. Vision enchants this surface world even as it heals the eye. And what the eye goes on to see is peace. -- Donald Revell

Ah, take the cash and let the credit go, nor heed the rumble of a distant drum. -- Omar Khayyam

With us stand those peerless men, our comrades, calling us to battle once again. -- Spanish Loyalist Civil War song.

I wake. Miraculous, n’est ce pas? At 86 I take for granted nothing. It’s now seven, wakened electronically, another miracle of man’s discovery for which I needn’t say a single magic word or clap my hands or offer an exchange, perhaps my soul. Already time is fleeting as I turn my shower on, prepare to gird for danger just ahead, those battles of the noisy day. My mind is focused on my weapons -- words. I will engage them, hone them, make them one with me. I’ve things to say with them. I’ll front them in their proud array, subvert them from their stiff defense, in order to enlist them in my enterprise.

Some seek for quiet, like Revell, as day begins. Why do they bother to arise? Or else why not seek out their Lethe in hash or Jesus, shock, some chemical, or even a bare bodkin as Prince Hamlet once proposed, although that might be too Draconian. One look at ants might put this retrograde idea in some perspective -- no? These insects are the life force, energy. How they improve each shining moment of their day. As we may do if we find will enough and some activity worth living for, some notion even worth the dying for, like those who volunteered to fight in Spain, a country not their own. Surrendering our will is easy. Fighting for a cause, and living’s, hard.

Khayyam it seems to me cops out. Naked self-advancement is the whole of what he wants. And even that tied to the present only, with no long-term goal. How unimportant, trivial and comfortable. Banal. What any bourgeois fool can do, content with jug of wine and getting laid from time to time and pondering his belly-button’s lint, or that of his beloved if she’s willing and close by. Perhaps a sit-com if it’s nine and he can find a mindset there, deep in his wilderness, retaining distance from the battles always going on to steal his liberties from him, a free will ceded to him only temporarily.

I towel myself off. I’m ready as I’ll ever be. Why opt for peace when every grave yawns patiently enough? I’ll see what I can stir up new today. What miracles of thought I can produce. Imagine ten full hours all my own, to make an impact on this world, my life, until I have to stop and make some dinner for my wife. I start to dress and roll my shirtsleeves up. I’d best be getting at it fast. Who knows when this next second coming up may be my last?