From time to time I try to figure out what it is I'm doing here. This website has been part political commentary, part life history, and part essay, with a big melodramatic helping of self-therapy thrown into the mix. So we end up with an eclectic mix, which is fine, so long as there's a theme. I confess that sometimes I have doubts about what that is.

A kind writer named John Goldfine once wrote me an encouraging note in which he said that some of my writing is characterized by the quality of grace. I really like that, and I want it to be true. I'm also seized by the notion that my own place as a writer is to answer Pontius Pilate's question, "What is truth?"

Grace and truth. That's what I'm striving for. Often I miss the mark.

So, I wanted to share that with you. What got me thinking about it was the fact that from time to time I read something that is simply beautiful to me, and I think, "I should put that on my website." I often have dutiful impulses like that: "I should call my mother;" "I should volunteer more;" "I should tell _________ at work that nobody likes him because he's deceitful and impervious to reason."

I frequently don't act on them. I probably never will. But at least I can be more diligent about sharing with you the beautiful things I read. Let's start now, shall we?

In a fine literary journal called Orchid, shared with me by the delightful writer, thinker, and brain-tumor warrior Sid Sharma, comes this breathtaking passage in a short story entitled "Odds and Ends," by Debbie Lee Wesselmann:

"White sugar sunlight, sweet and crystalline, poured through the uncovered windows and onto the carpet, sifting up to their knees."

How bad can the day be, with an image so glorious in one's mind?