500
This is my 500th essay, and yes your yawns are noted.
500 is a goal I set when I learned that G. K. Chesterton, an English author from the Victorian Period whom I discovered in my “golden years” and greatly admire, reportedly wrote over 4000 essays in his lifetime. I place him in the same rarified air as Leon Hale. Somehow I entered the number in my mental filing cabinet as 5000, and being that I based my goal of 10% of Chesterton's production on this erroneous number---well, you know, thus the 500 essays. When I discovered this error, I simply said, “Damn the torpedoes. Full steam ahead,” or something a little less impressive.
I discovered Chesterton because of my habit of using quotes to support my own thoughts; his name and quotes kept coming up: “We speak of 'touching' a man's heart, but we can do nothing to his head but hit it,” and “When learned men begin to use their reason, then I generally discover that they haven't got any,” and “If there were not God, there would be no atheists.”
I still resent not being informed of Chesterton while at LSU. I suspect that it was his keen sense of humor which knocked him out of the pantheon of great writers of the Victorian period which was not known for its appreciation of humor. I can't claim a brilliant mind as Chesterton could, but I do claim a reasonably sharp sense of humor.
In retrospect, I suppose learning to be an accomplished Bourré player at LSU somewhat counterbalances my deprivation of the knowledge that G. K. Chesterton even existed while attending those hallowed halls.
Hmmm…I guess life really does find a way to provide balance.
Now that I've reached my goal, I recognize that it's meaningless.
I doubt that you will find the following on my tombstone: “Here lies John Pinkerton. He wrote 500 essays.” I guess it's just a personal achievement only to be appreciated by moi. Anyhoo, my personal preference, as I've mentioned before, for a tombstone epitaph is “Oops.”
I suppose that I'll continue to write my “little attempts” into the future however brief that may be. My hospice folks keep acting as though the whirlwind may take me away any moment. I have other ideas which do not include my sudden departure from this mortal plane. However, I suspect that neither hospice nor I will be the engine of my survival or demise.
Well, let's all show up and see what's next.
enough