#400

For the big #400, I thought I'd put into words how much I love M 'n' m. I'm grateful. We're all grateful for certain people in our lives. They're gifts. Life itself is a gift, it seems to me, despite it's challenges, which can be merciless, but life actualizes as a gift, independent of its highs and lows, precisely when we love. That's it. When we love. That's my opinion anyway. Being loved back is swell too, but out of our control. There's something suspicious, however, about the circular or reciprocal nature of most genuine love. But the world gets ugly sometimes. I know that, and so do you. I promised to describe how much I love M 'n' m and, well, I can't, no surprise, but neither, perfectly, can Fitzgerald or Melville, or the Irish or Russian masters, or the poets, Shakespeare, Homer, Rumi, Rilke. I think this chase is why they kept writing and writing and thank God they did; they weren't lousy like some of us. My favorite contemporary writers – Michael Chabon, Mark Helprin, Maria Popova, to name a few – aren't lousy either. They're brilliant and inventive describers of things, but otherwise a lot like the rest of us. Capturing a thing in words and phrases is hard. It's analogous to the difficulty of hitting a baseball to me, and pitching a baseball, because there are so many variables, moving parts, choices, and outcomes, for the pitcher and the batter both, as for the writer and reader both. But we can tell when it goes well and when it doesn't. I think of Twain's saying: "The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter – it's the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning."

I love M 'n' m and I'm very grateful for them.