SO WHAT?: Me, my life

by Bryan Islip

About a year ago my youngest son remarked quite casually that he enjoyed reading my occasional blogs. But because I, his father, obviously enjoyed writing them, why not blog about your life?' he suggested, adding that people seldom know very much about their parents’ lives and are always curious. So I started blogging in November 2014. It took me about a year to cover through irregular blogs, in roughly chronological order, the years of my life between 1939 and 2015. This book is a an edited gathering together. Why should I or any non-celebrity put themselves through the toil and sometime pain of remembering and producing with as much care as he possibly can these one hundred thousand words? That’s a question that has been asked of me by a well meaning friend and one which I have indeed often asked of myself these twelve months past. I regret, friend and self, having no answer other than, perhaps, the traditional and equally pathetic answer to the eternal question, why do you climb that mountain? At any rate it has nothing to do with money or expectation of a readership or ego. You should know that I am in no way egotistical. I have little to be proud about anyway! On the contrary I consider myself, whenever I might bother with any kind of introspection, a humble kind of a man …I cannot tell what you and other menThink of this life; but, for my single self,I had as lief not be as live to beIn awe of such a thing as I myself. ( Julius Caesar)The first lines of my main text will tell you that my bodily structure is today well inhabited by advanced prostate cancer cells. Therefore I am expecting, soon enough, to embark on that mighty adventure that goes by the name of death. I literally shiver with excitement at the prospect of meeting once more, soul to soul, not only both of my wives who, if you read these pages, you will come to know I have loved, but perhaps even the author of the words above alongside the other poets and the writers and the artists; they who have paved with their starry lustre this man’s often pain-filled pathway through his life on earth. Bryan IslipDecember 2015

287 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 19, 2016