I'll cut it out soon, I promise.

I wrote this:

The nice thing about harsh realities is that existential angst just can't, in the face of them, maintain its grip. Oh, for sure, some existential tricks are helpful, but angst just isn't worth the bother.

But I was mistaken. You might not think angst is maintaining its grip, simply because the general busyness of crisis distracts you, but if angst is fated to be your traveling companion in life, you can be certain it will reassert itself in time.

I was thinking I should give it a name, seeing as how existential angst doesn’t skip daintily off the tongue. So, what I’m going to do right now is see if I can Google-up a random name generator since meaningfulness is not one of my stronger attributes...(so hang on there a second...)

Ok, I’m back. And I’m going to have to confess--the generator was random, but I had to fire it off several times before the right name popped up. So here is the new moniker of my angst-friend: Nitza. Oh, it just makes sense and you know it.

Nitza has been very evident lately, and I’ve had to think why. Because thinking why is something I can do now so effectively that the whole story becomes quite transparent.

Odd there, that I even used the word “story,” because, right now, what Nitza is on about is the dissolution of my default narrative. The default narrative(s) went like this: There is a guiding force in life from which I can discern a path, a purpose, and a means to creatively contribute to the collective is-ness. It’s a pretty story, and who wouldn’t want live in it?

In fact, it was a portion of the following quote (which is often mistakenly attributed to Goethe, when in fact, only the final couplet is a rough translation from Faust) which provided some of the psychological rocket fuel I needed to get myself through the first book I wrote:

...the moment one definitely commits oneself, the providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets: Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.  Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!

In fact, this is a passage from W.H. Murray’s 1951 The Scottish Himalaya Expedition. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but magical thinking--regardless of whether one’s muse is Goethe or Murray--was probably better abandoned along with baby teeth.

I do favor narrative, so it’s understandable that I’d want one. But I expect that there are many people who are able to make life meaningful without imagining the guiding nudge of a thinking cosmos, so that’s what I’m working on now. Restructuring the way I see things, perhaps using a material which Nitza isn’t so prone to shake. Until I get at least a good foundation built though, she’s rattling away at the bit of time-space continuum I’m occupying. She likes to remind me of how old I am, and point out acts of notable creativity by others who are not me, and ask (in her tremulous alto) “what did you write those books for??” To which I can only, so far, respond “Nothing Nitza. I wrote them for nothing. And we will make that ok.”

Actually, I’m hoping that now that I have outed Nitza, I won’t feel compelled to write about her so much. On to something more interesting. Like how April showers bring...May showers, which bring, apparently, ants.