Introduction

“Life can only be understood backward, and can only be lived forward”. This truism has for me been both a source of inspiration, while also a coercive force that has constrained my writing over time. I am possessed of the belief, whether correct or not, that constructing text is an act of life-affirmation, of creative forces that seek growth, not regress. Writing to me is indeed “living forward”, and so I have managed to skirt around the “backward understanding” in my process. I feel these omissions as virtual dead spots in the texts I construct – though I may be speaking of an event, fictional or real, from some point in the past my description is not fully vested with the authority that actual memory can grant. This is the interweaving between one’s memories and fantasies capitalized on by writers far transcendent of my paltry skills, such as Steven King. So many of his works are clearly drawn from experiences of his early life in Maine, and though by now it certainly has an “ad nauseum” feel to it, it is a comfortable familiarity and of course an amazingly successful one. By contrast, a read of my attempts to bring past events to life seems placed in a sterile, sanitized hospital-like environment. Mea culpa.

During my academic studies, I was assigned a piece of writing that, while the content left little impression on me, the structure and impetus behind it has remained. Written by an Anglican clergyman in the late 1800's "Apologia por vita Sua" has become a meme that informs the way I evaluate my life. The literal translation - "Apology for my life" is profound and at the same instant ironic because my ultimate belief is that we have very little control over the directions our lives take. For John Henry Cardinal Newman, it was the essence of Christian guilt that drove his narrative; for this "Apologia"of mine, it is to explain the context of external forces that drove my internal decisions which, for better or worse, have shaped my life. I would argue this applies to all our lives. Most specifically, this series of writings is my act of contrition for the offense of not fully embracing the paradox of the struggle to be responsible for events that in the end I cannot control or even fathom - my best perception of what happened to shape me into the middle-aged persona I now bear. 

There is nothing magical about reaching the age of 55, any more than say 53 or 61, but it does make available a certain organizational strategy that dovetails nicely with my goal of coming to terms with my history. My first fully-fleshed memories of life are from the age of 5. The concept of this series is, beginning with my 5^th year in 1963, I will advance the narrative forward one year each week, so that by this anniversary date next year, there will be exactly 52 pieces, and in the process I will have constructed a sort of autobiography. Sort of.

For me, this is an ambitious gambit. My writing has always been more of a tsunami event than a steady flow of a country stream. Past attempts at forging some kind of discipline with creating text, other than panicked deadlines when I was in college, have all run aground. But hope springs eternal, failure though stinging is no longer a monster I run from, and I have surprised myself before, so maybe this time …

On with the show!