Good Morning Jacob

Letter to my Son
Sunday, 22 February

Good Morning Jacob…

It’s raining outside.  The last of our snow will soon wash away.  Today will no longer be cold as temperatures return to the fifties.

I try to live my life objectively – making sure everything adds up correctly, no matter how I slice it.  But I try to bend the rules to my way of thinking and the setbacks are predictable.  Still, I remain committed to bargaining with life.

I draw pictures that start as doodles.  There’s very little thought given them at the time.  I just proceed with whatever seems an opportune image.  Maybe I visualize just a mouth on the paper.  There is no plan.  This isn’t always the case, though.  Sometimes I attempt to draw something real.  Later I doodle over it.  The item becomes a story.  Here’s an obsessive quality to be exploited.

There’s a downside to everything we choose to do.

Words usually tie things together that makes sense.  It’s rational but incomplete.  We can’t quantify everything, thank God.  People want to move beyond common sense.  We need mystery.  Our greatest minds feed on it:  Einstein, Newton, Shakespeare.  They had no desire to ever stop puzzling.

Reason is useful in avoiding loss of life.  We want to stick around and puzzle over all the pleasure of physical existence.  What is love?  See – here is something that can’t be quantified.  Why would you want to?  Do you really want to erase enjoyment of its mystery?  Like I’m actually worried that would happen.  How much thought has been given love in writing and song?  Rhetorical question; the point is how little progress we've made in its understanding.  For instance, what motivates its evolution?  I assume love has progressed up the evolutionary scale.  But what does all this matter to two people finding themselves alone together on a June night?  Mystery lets imagination go to work.  This can make for a wonderfully personal reality… something worth posting on the refrigerator door.

Love,

          Dad

© Tom Taylor