To essay is to find a series of words that do what you want. To essay is to find a series of words with a beginning, middle and end: an attractive beginning that establishes a desire to keep going; a middle that satisfies some of the initial attractions, but also offer surprises, complications, wrinkles, and glosses to keep things moving forward; an end that leaves reader and writer both satisfied and wanting more. To essay in a personal way (to write a personal essay) is to give a reader the feeling that something personal is taking place. Like a two way mirror. On one side the essayist inspects themselves in a reflective word-surface. On the other side sits the reader, unseen but seeing. Personal essays can range from the cosmetic to the cosmic. At one moment the author is fixing their hair, looking for which pores might need squeezing. The next, they’ve somehow dissolved the word surface and appear in three dimensions, in the mind’s eye, wrestling unexpected beasts. Or are they playing? Sometimes one person’s essaying sparks another’s desires to essay, in which case the essaying has become interpersonal. Essaying includes both improvising and editing. While an essay proceeds in search of an end or a release—not a stationary bale of hay to catch an arrow, nor a shooting gallery with tin-clown faces swiping left and right, but a live animal ending, with scents and prints left behind—to essay is a verb, a process. To essay is to circle, stalk and prey, or to be circled, stalked and preyed upon by the essay itself. To essay is to be on the tracks the essay lays down, until the ending comes into view. The essayist wonders, Have I been leading or following? To essay is to find out, yes.