A Day Off

I'm worn right down to the bone and in serious need of a day's rest. Worse, I have a backlog of neglected tasks, every one of which has some claim to urgency, that exceeds my powers of description. So I'm going to make this very short, that I might turn to the obvious and impending business of the day: worrying.

Some writers start off promising and get steadily more impressive over time. Sadly, that's a minority of them. Other writers start off promising, but over time it becomes clear that all they are is "writers" -- i.e., that they have nothing of substance to say. A third group, far smaller than either of the first two, starts off promising and gets steadily better, while displaying a degree of percipience and comprehension that's so large you have to squint to see it.

Whoever the gentleman who styles himself Ace of Spades might be, he's impressed me for a long time with his eloquence and intelligence. That creates the "problem" of a "high bar" he must surmount to get me to rise to a still greater degree of appreciation. Yet he's stunned me with his latest column -- not because of his grace of expression (which I've come to expect), and not because he expresses sentiments new to me (they're embedded at the core of my soul), but because of the immense power he's put behind them in a short, classically simple piece.

You don't have to share Ace's beliefs about first things -- I don't -- to be rocked by the impact of this remarkable essay. It's of a quality that compels me to render the writer's ultimate compliment to a colleague: "I wish I'd written it."

Read it all.
Then live it.

Later, Gentle Reader.