Dickens had his Tale of Two Cities.  Clint Eastwood had Two Mules for Sister Sarah.  The Roman god Janus had two faces.  Me?  I have two mistresses.  And they’re exhausting me.

Oh, at one time I was an able juggler.  Kept five or six balls in the air all the time—with my eyes closed, and my conscience ambivalent.  My skills and stamina have eroded over time.  My conscience, for what it's worth, remains as lackadaisical as ever.

Before you go and label me a cad, a Casanova, or a Lothario, understand that when I say ‘mistresses,’ I’m not talking about smokey-eyed femme fatales.  That train left the depot years ago.  It now resides on some rusty spur line.

My two mistresses are my guitar, and the enticing lure of a blank white page.  I play.  I write.  But I’ll be damned if I can do both anymore.  One mistress must go.  Juggling is a younger man’s game.

So how do I choose?  Flip a coin?  Throw a dart?  Nah.  Too random, too common to satisfy me. I guess my best bet is to consider the pros and cons of each of my loves—even if analytics is a heartless hangman. 

Let’s start with my guitar and my innate penchant to perform.

Have you ever seen anything as beautiful as a well-made acoustic guitar?  Her long, aristocratic neck?  The graceful curves of her shoulder, waist, and hips?  Have you ever run your hand over the gentle swell of an archtop’s belly?  If not, you’re missing something mystical. And that’s before she responds to your dancing fingertips with a voice even Heaven’s angels might envy.

I’ve never held a guitar that wasn’t alive and sensual.  More importantly, I’ve never played a guitar that didn’t respond to my manipulations, no matter how ardent . . . and/or clumsy.  When George Harrison wrote While My Guitar Gently Weeps he validated everything I believe about the relationship between a man and his guitar.  They weep together, or not at all.

That brings me to another aspect of my guitar.  She isn’t jealous of my writing—so long as I write only for her.  If I make my guitar my only mistress, I still get to write . . . songs.  I enjoy writing songs, and there was a time when that was enough for me.  Hey, if it is good enough for the likes of Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Bob Dylan, and The Boss, it ought to be good enough for me, right?  Well, sorta.

My other mistress, The-Clean-White-Page-of-Endless-Possibilities, has already burrowed under my skin and seeped its way into my head and heart.  Truth is, I put my guitar aside for twenty years while I chased the pristine page with string after string of nouns, verbs, similes, and metaphors that had never been arranged in that particular fashion before.  Heady stuff.  With a clean page and the alphabet, I may one day ‘arrange’ a work of true note. Likely?  Probably not.  But the mistress of the clean, white page keeps beckoning.  Maybe she knows something I don’t.  Why else would she keep urging me on?

So, I ask again, how do I choose?

We all make hundreds of decisions every day, almost without realizing it.  Caf or decaf?  Glazed, or jelly? The red slip-ons, or the black pumps?  Regular, or premium?  Answer the phone, or let it slide to voicemail?  

Sure, many decisions are frivolous, inconsequential.  Then you run into some toughies.  Should I stick it out, or divorce the SOB?  Blow the whistle on the company, or keep my mouth shut?  Vote with my conscience, or my pocketbook?

Some philosophers claim we live in time the same way fish live in water.  I tend to agree.  But I would add that we swim in a sea of constant decision-making.  We call it free-will, and, given a choice, there isn’t an entity on this planet who wouldn’t bite, scratch, and claw to preserve their right to it.

Which brings me back to my problem of the two mistresses.  At this point in my life, I am graced with more free-will than stamina.  I need to make a decision.

I love my guitar.  I love performing—even when it scares the Ritz Crackers out of me.  I love the fellowship I share with my bandmates.  My guitar is real.  My mates are real. 

On the other hand, a blank page is an enigma and an abstraction.  It doesn’t truly exist until someone scratches something onto it.  Maybe something as mundane as a grocery list, or as life-altering as a stay-of-execution.  Ain’t that a kick in your megabyte?

How can I possibly choose an abstraction over a warm body that still smells of Sitka spruce and the luthier’s skilled hands?  I guess maybe I can’t.

But I can’t turn my back on the page of endless possibilities, either.

Can I keep them both happy, satisfied?  Recent history suggests I cannot.  Since taking my guitar out of mothballs, I haven’t finished a single new story—and it’s been over a year.  

Sometimes we make our decisions by not deciding.  We close our eyes and go with the flow, drift on the wind, and wait for something inevitable to happen.  It isn’t much of a strategy, but strategies aren’t always the bee’s knees, either.  Ask Napolean . . . or Apollo Creed.

I fear I'm powerless to decide right now.  I'll get back to you, let you know how things are going.  Alternatively, if you don't hear from me again, blame (or thank) my guitar.