Here’s my favorite obituary ever, clipped from an old issue of my hometown newspaper. ‘Buchart, Peter Wilhelm: Accidentally killed last Saturday when a bullet ricocheted while he was endeavoring to shoot a rabbit in his vegetable garden. Surviving are his wife, three children and one rabbit.’

(What would you like your newspaper to write about you?)

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I’ve been thinking about words today. I arise as the sun and the paper are being delivered, and, as soon as I am able to distinguish the one from the other, I wave at the one and get acquainted with the other. Then on to the keyboard, with only intermittent reprieves, until a part of me is sore and another bruised. I’m quite sure my own inarticulateness will only hasten a heart attack, and so you can find me morning, noon and night doctoring these bloody bits, assessing their effect and exercising the weak.

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Quick aside. I read somewhere recently the ancient Greeks didn’t have a word for interesting. ‘Really!’ I thought, ‘Was everything interesting to them, or nothing at all?’

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As I think back to my childhood, then to my kids, I’m convinced it isn’t the words, and the lessons they meant to convey that take hold for a lifetime. Quite the opposite. I can’t tell you how many of those speeches I even heard, let alone those I’ve consciously determined to change with my kids. Yet what was never articulated have the most lasting power. The importance of quality time together, integrity in all exigencies, striving to be better tomorrow than today, and one that’s been growing in importance lately, at least one damn meal together each week.

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Just had a thought. The moment you decide that what you know is more important than what you have been taught to believe, you will have really started to live.

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I’m now thinking I should simply endeavor to untangle, and keeping myself to a minimum of sentences which I myself don’t fully understand is to be my yardstick.

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Today’s word: epitaph. (What’s yours?)

I’ve been like a cricket in midsummer hopping all over the place with nary a rhyme or reason. I’ve been struggling to keep pace with the demands of multiple posts a week, and I’d lost my way.

Trouble is, I’m not that good of a writer on first draft. Nor on second, either. I struggle to get it right, to put things in order on the screen, to capture something of what is and my back is up against it.

Start parenthesis. (Then, too, there’s the medium. One step removed from pen and paper. (Of contemplation, then the act of right hand writing while left hand holds down the paper, reflection, jotting an errant yet perhaps meaningful thought lower down the page, reflection, another sentence and so on.) I haven’t even touched on the distractions inherent online.) End Parenthesis.

It’s been tiring, this battle with writing well. What once came flowing out of me was now a mere trickle. I’d lost my voice. I found myself twaddling, like now.

This is, conservatively speaking, driving me nuts!

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I should just let go, I’m thinking. Take a deep breath…let it out.

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So much of my time past was wound up pretty tight. I hated the incomplete in my life, all little things, mind you, nonetheless matters of some concern to me. The dripping faucet needing a washer, the cracked and sinking patio needing mud jacking, weathered aluminum siding needing paint, weeds in planting beds needing a tug, rusting paint cans in a corner of the basement needing retirement.

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For me, writing on the subject at hand, and in order to contain the surprise that initially delighted me, the logic needs to come after the fact, with the insight right up front. As in life, if you thrust the logic in front of you as you head out the door, hurtling experience ahead to pave the walk, then you invariably lose the revelation that informs that day. The writing of a post, like that proverbial walk, can be worked on once it is, but first and foremost it cannot be worried into being.

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There. This will simply have to do. My house in the burbs has become my bride, and she’s got her own honey-do list if there’s to be any peace around here. First up, a jig opening up some paint cans for drying. Then, I’ll waltz over to the hardware store for washers of various sizes. I’ll dance attention on her all afternoon, but she’ll have to sit out and wait for warmer weather before being treated to a new coat and pumps.