I am a life-line for some of the people I know, enjoy, and love. Their lives become grim in a central aspect of what they do, or who they are, yet I remain somehow steady for them: not a therapist to tell them it’s all O.K.; not a teacher or an advisor to tell them what to do; more a constant person who wants to engage them in serious (or light) talk about an idea, do some analyses of situations we think about in common, seek each other’s experience or advice or critical thinking-through together.

Each of us occasionally, find ourselves in difficult times; times from which we will probably emerge, yet see no present light emerging. What seemed momentary now tries to fill all of life’s spaces; all thinking thoughts drift like a mud-slide into these moment’s dire straits. We call each other, find one another in such times, and here I am, fairly reliable, knowing what grimness is and how it may travel in the mind’s eye enveloping more and more of your being. I have done such journeys, you see, and know them all too well; as close to the edges of their dirtyness and down-ness as staying being has permitted me.

Now restricted, I practice them each day, much like practicing the violin. I confirm their being, I can confirm your being. And we move on, I a life-line, pushing your thoughts beyond the sun-eclipsings of doom’s concentrations, into some thought development we share. I seek you, I want your advice out of the larger experience of memory’s brighter days, into tomorrow’s openings.

Come on: there is work to do!