Returning to the Blog has to do with my once again falling into a pit of despair. I know the sensation well by now. A sort of free floating air-drop. Descending into the pit of an immense and growing darkness. Gravity flies past me. I am abandoned by it, left sinking in a float of despair. The darkness rushes up in its inky dark and silent splendour. I grasp the rip cord in one hand. Do I deploy the parachute?

Why bother?

My fate was sealed on the day I came screaming from the womb. There is no going back. Time is a single unidirectional arrow. It points forever to stage right. This way out. That is the only direction it gives. I have been headed for the same exit for 64 years. It is a characteristic human foolishness to think the delay of one second, or a year, or ten, will make any significant difference to the outcome.

By virtue of an accident of total randomness, a process otherwise known as life, N was encountered between the aisles of a grocery store. This event took place several weeks ago. I was unbelievably impolite to her but that is another story. She made a remark that stuck. A remark that has been turning over and over, rolling about in my mind for the past few days. N said “You think you are an outlier.”

An outlier is an unexplained scientific blob, one that lies well outside the expected range. It is nature’s version of an ink spot. It winds up at an unexpected point on the surface, a spatter. And nobody can quite explain how it possibly arrived there. But there it is.

Here I am.