Next!

As always I am on deadline now.

I have work due on Friday and miles to go before I sleep.

I also have no blogpost written for tomorrow.

In my personal Dante-esq inferno, that's ring eleven. Of nine.

It's against my pith and core to miss a day. Missing an assignment is worse.

So, this one's off the cuff. And courtesy of my near eidetic memory.

I remember, or think I do, a series of books I used to buy whenever a new entry came out. They were on Jewish life. Which, despite the bludgeoning of hatred and prejudice, is as varied and broad as anything.

One month the series (it was called Jewish Encounters) might do something on a Biblical character. The next month, they might publish something on Barney Ross, a boxer who was a champion in three weight classes and had an overall professional record of 74-4-3. The "Pride of the Ghetto" was never knocked out, and while in the Marines during WWII, won a Silver Star, a Purple Heart and a Presidential Unit Citation. He was also nearly court-martialed for beating the shit out of an NCO who uttered some Jew hate.

What this post is about is not Ross, however. It's an epigram each of the books in the Jewish Encounters series had on its frontispiece. It said, "The central struggle of Jewish life is finding the next book."

Since I've read that quotation, I've thought about that quotation. If it's not the very definition of "lifelong learning," I'm not sure what is. 

Also ambition.

They're what I'm writing about. 

Because that quotation came to mind this morning as I juggled the three live projects I have yanking at my appendages right now. 

I said to myself, "I need to find my next assignment."

I suppose you can file that sentiment in the greedy folder, or the workaholic folder, or the "george-grew-up-poor-and-is-petrified-by-poverty" folder.

But really, wanting the next is none of those things. It's wanted to win a piece of business after you've just won one. It's looking at the Monets and chomping at the bit to get to the Van Goghs. It's loving Puccini, but eager to hear Norma by Bellini. It's not, really, about amassing wealth like a muskian or bezoid. It's loving knowledge and work and learning and solving problems that need solving.

It's loving, actually, loving learning. It's loving, actually, loving solving. It's loving, actually, loving living.

I'm often gloomy and downcast. 
Looooooo
Goooooo
Breeeeee
Oussssss.
Lugubrious.
My world view is dark as a Hasid's closet at midnight.

After all, I'm turning 68 in less than two months. To steal a line from the great satirist Tom Lehrer, "when Beethoven was my age, he was dead for 12 years." 

In other words, I've lived a good, productive life. I have the good, productive children to prove that. Outside of maybe putting together some of 3,000,000 words I've already written and trying to shape them into a book or two, I've no songs left unsung.

But Beethoven might have said the same thing.

Unfinished symphony or not, bang those keys.

Please.