I haven't been around much lately for a variety of reasons. I've been busy, stressed and full of drivel. I know being full of drivel never stopped me from posting before but now, we need a masterpiece.

I wish I were endowed with the aptitude to pull off this masterpiece but I'm not. No matter how much I write, study, practice, read, think, listen, and live, I don't, I won't, I can't. See, this masterpiece is unlike anything that you or I have ever read, heard or thought. This post will be special. Wait, I need a better word and the thesaurus is no help at all. Unique? Uncommon? Weak. Extraordinary? Better, but not enough.

I can't even conceptualize how many words must have been written over the course of human history. Is there a number big enough to quantify it? Still, The Masterpiece isn't there, not in all of those volumes of pulp, literature, articles, letters, texts, albums, atlases, bestsellers, tomes, brochures, codex, compendiums, dissertations, editions, encyclopedias, essays, folios, handbooks, magazines, manuals, monographs, nonfiction, pamphlets, paperbacks, periodicals, primers, publications, reprints, scrolls, tomes, tracts, treatises. The words just to describe all those words are overwhelming and yet. it. isn't. there.

Innumerable masterpieces hide among all those works and words but not this one, not The Masterpiece. It won't be me that writes it, I know that, but I have to believe it is there waiting to be discovered the way that Michelangelo looked at a rock and saw David. It's there, it always has been, just waiting for some gifted, inspired sculptor to pull exactly the right words out of the ether, put them in order, shave a little here, take this out there and ever so slowly and carefully bring David out from under all that dust.

It's not for lack of trying as all those volumes attest. People much more talented and gifted than anyone who's ever crossed your path have tried and failed, but it is there because it has to be. It simply has to be.

Don't expect never-ending sunshine or sugar and spice and little poop-less puppies, or the cure for cancer and all things evil. The Masterpiece heals human souls, that's all. We'll have to take it from there.

This gyrating blue ball seems peaceful and majestic while it lurches through the expanding universe.   A closer look reveals all eight billion of us clinging to the brown parts as we careen through the cosmos.  We're all together yet every one of us is all alone. That, my friends, is the human condition and it's why we need The Masterpiece.

The Masterpiece will help us to let go of our death grip and start to move around until we realize that there's a lot more to this watery blue rock than meets the eye. Have you seen some of the species that live in the blue parts? They are alluring and monstrous and gargantuan and microscopic and that's just that parts we can't readily see.

It's all there. Everything we need to make a go of this human race is here in abundance and we have everything we've learned throughout human history. We can turn dirt into iron lungs and airplanes and food but we can't heal our souls. The Masterpiece is the salve to rehabilitate our defective humanity.

I tried to write it. I did what I could and so did you and you and you and it wasn't nearly enough, so I hope you'll forgive me if I pull my comfortable chair over here by the fire and wait for The Masterpiece.

I just don't know what else to do.