Whenever I feel the urge to write something these days, I feel an equally strong urge to write nothing. The latter urge overpowers the former more often than the other way around, and thus I write almost nothing. More to the point, I manage to finish barely anything. The urge to write something is based on habit, I guess, but the urge to write nothing is kind of new, for it stems from a question that has been nagging on me lately: cui bono? The trouble with this question is that it cannot be answered. That is, it implies its own dismal answer. Once it enters your mind, this question is nearly impossible to exorcise, as well. Indeed, cui bono? Yourself? People like you? People in general? It is time to stop writing, I guess.

Addendum I (May 10, 2007)

“I refuse to take you seriously,” responded Bob Collén to this piece, which went to friends as an electronic postcard. “Attribute the slump to bio-rhythms.” And then he reminded me of Marcus Aurelius, St. Augustine, Nietzsche, and Solzhenitsyn, who wrote “for the drawer” when all else seemed futile. “Well put,” I wrote back. Although I felt uncomfortable about it, I tried to explain the pessimism that had gripped me. “I see terrible things coming,” I confessed. “And I cannot see our species fighting the adversities with either intelligence or moral purpose.” I concluded on a happy note, of course: “I am sure the funk will not last…” If for no other reason, I failed to add, then because I have friends like Bob. My rhetorical question answered.

Addendum II (March 15, 2015)

Reading this piece, which I had come upon without looking, I immediately thought of Bob Collén. Thus I was not surprised to find his name in the addendum, as well as his refusal to take me seriously. Friends like him mean a great deal to me. Alas, Bob is no more! He passed away six months ago (“Brothers of Mind,” September 24, 2014). Not surprisingly, the urge to write is so much weaker at this juncture. Many an old soul has willingly left this world for loss of friends. Little by little, the old urge peters away with them…

Addendum III (July 10, 2016)

Out of the blue, neither my laptop nor my desktop could connect to the Internet earlier today. I reset them both, and I also reset the wireless router in my study, but to no avail. And then I learned from friends in Motovun that the whole hilltown was disconnected from the Internet. It had to do with the service provider someplace in Istria. Before the connection came back, though, I started thinking about my urge to write once again. Is it not time to rejoice in the silly glitch, I wondered? Is it not time to celebrate it even? The good old Latin expression came back to me in no time. The best I could come up with by way of a reply is that the question will be coming back to me ever more often as time goes by. Sooner or later, it may well become the most persistent question facing me. Cui bono? Not to beat around the bush, I do not have a clue at this stage of my life!