And so it begins.  The first of what I hope to be a (more or less) daily post, however short, however insignificant.  My goal is not so much to be read at it is to create, to channel the creative tension within me.  I think about the fact of being alive, the stream of consciousness that has a genesis and a spilling over into vastness, and I become aware of a desire to wring every droplet of passion out of myself.  At the same time, given my tendency toward the grandiose, I know that I must temper my enthusiasm, must seek to strike a balance between the large and the small, the intention and the reality, the impulse and the action.

To make time for this daily pilgrimage to the wellspring of ideas I will have to cut back elsewhere—time is the currency of life and death, an economy that can spiral out of control without a budget.  Perhaps I will read fewer books or, in those times when, given a choice between restlessness and relaxation, ask a little more of myself.  For are these not the fundamental questions: What do I want out of this sojourn on the planet?  What do I chose to do or not to do?  What kind of person will I be?  What will I create and what will I destroy?

Perhaps these posts are a means of answering the unanswerable.  After all, whether profound or absurd, genius or mediocre, I cannot escape the fact of my mortality and the relation between my actions and the fullness of the moment.  No matter how much time I may spend looking forward with a smile or a frown, no matter the length of the shadow cast upon me by the past, I will never be anywhere but today: right here, typing on my computer while seated at an Au Bon Pain in Worcester, MA.  Across from me sits my girlfriend, Bianca, who is absorbed with her work.  To the left of me there is a Mozzarella and Tomato Panini, my stomach waiting for my mind to slow down long enough to let hunger drive my body.  All around me are people chatting, eating, laughing…I feel like I am a hub around which the entire gradation of existence revolves…O, but also do I feel like the most distant speck of dust flung into space by a meaningless breeze that picked me up and sent me hurtling into oblivion.

In short, I am deeply alive and I can close this expression of myself with a contented flourish, the signature left by the beating of my heart.