How much consistency does in writing matter?

Cardiac incoherence is vital.

Photo by Marek Studzinski on Unsplash

Consistency.

Consistency with what? With whom?

With what I’ve been writing for months? With the me of a year ago?

I’d be a monolith. Irremovable from my position. Consistent, authentic, and memorable, of course.

When I read my blog posts from six months ago, I have the tragic suspicion that my site has been hacked. That some wretch has his hands on the texts I so happily identified with, millions of days ago.

Who wrote that stuff? I’m not deleting it just for SEO, which greatly appreciates content variety. But for the rest, I quickly close the WordPress control panel and move on without looking back.

What I need is all here now, in this line, in this WORD.

I have to be consistent with her, not with her deceased sisters and with what I have been.

Our conduct, our way of relating to others, our set of values and non-values—these elements vary little throughout life. Rather, they oscillate around their resultant, based on our momentary ability to tolerate the world around us.

Even our heartbeats remain faithful to a precise, inimitable pattern, uniquely ours. Events both internal and external to our bodies continually disrupt this constant rhythm and adapt the beats to the body’s needs.

If our pulse did not continually oscillate around cardiac coherence, we would not have blood available when greater quantities are needed, we could not flee from danger, we would be incapable of complex thoughts, of loving and envying, of reproducing. We would be immobile. Perpetual motions in an infinite space. We would be dead.

Cardiac incoherence is vital.

Like bunches of grapes around the same ancient vine, in every season words are born with new flavors, chosen by the rain and the fog, by the will of the sun, by the tilling of the soil, by the pruning, by the time of the harvest.

Longer, more tannic, high-proof words, words turned to vinegar by a technical oversight.

We at the keyboard are this. We are when in the evening we close the cellar door behind us and remain still for a second, listening to the chirping of the crickets. Motionless, listening to the distant rumble of fermentation doing its work.

Coherence is there. In the bubbling of the vats.