Now or never

				Wake up.
						   …
				Wake up.
						   …
		    You are sleeping.
						   Yes.
You have been asleep forever.
						   Yes.
        You can wake up now,
                        if you wish.
						   I can?
        But you will have to go
            to sleep again later.
						   Oh.  What if I don’t wake up
                                                   now?
Then you will sleep forever.
						   And what happens after I wake
                                                   up?
    It is up to you.  You will be
awake.  For a time.  And then
      you will go back to sleep.
						   Forever?
					Yes.
						   So continue sleeping forever,
                                                   or be awake and then
                                                   sleep forever?
					Yes.
						   Seems like any easy choice.
You would like to be awake,
                                  then?
						   Yes.
	In spite of everything?
						   Yes.  Very much so.  Yes.

There are more things in heaven and earth

The star PSR B1509-58 appears to take the shape of a human hand and reach out as it dies – 17,000 year ago.  The light just now reaches our eyes.

All’s well that ends well?

Why this infatuation with endings? We can witness or experience the greatest life or love in the history of the world, yet if it ends badly it is somehow sad or tragic.

Nothing lasts. If there is bliss at the beginning, or in the middle, does tragedy at the end undo it?

Perhaps, indeed, “the best you can hope for is to die in your sleep.”  (Kenny Rogers, The Gambler)

We’ll miss you, Rosie

Rose Sobieski

December 23, 1912 – June 28, 2008

“Enjoy each day.”

Sunscreen versus time

This time of year, at this time of the day, the sun hits my room with a particular slant – long, angled light that brings out every crack in this old desk, every speck on this dusty keyboard.

Every year around this time the light is just like this. Yet sometimes it seems it was only a moment ago, and it’s as if my life is passing in too-quick beats, the sun illuminating my hand just so, the wrinkles growing deeper before my eyes.

What did you do today?

Irrational living

Saw the movie “Away From Her” last night, and it’s stayed with me all day like a punch in the chest. It sometimes seems impossible to be joyous when you know it’s all going to end some day, that even the luckiest will age and have to say goodbye. Happiness in the face of this realization seems almost irrational. Yet to take a life, fleeting as it may be, and spend it being sad is at least equally irrational (and to no real purpose I can see.)

Maybe rationality is just something we impose upon the world (or at least our perception of it.) Like justice or beauty. In any case, between irrational happiness and sadness, the rational choice seems obvious. But people FEEL, and there’s the rub. Reminds me of great words by e.e. cummings, sent to me by a friend some time ago.

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don’t cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids’ flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life’s not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

Your last words

Recently read an article about the new manager of the Yankees, whose mother died some time ago. According to the article, her last words to her son were, “Don’t forget me.” Somehow this is painful to the heart even though it seems likely that every one of us will feel the same way at our death.

Likely there will be many, many things we want to say in our final moment. But how to prioritize? And what to finish with? I don’t judge this man’s mother, as I may place the exact same burden (gift?) on anyone still hanging around when I go. But I hope that I will finish as the Zen master did (can’t recall which one. Basho?), that I will be fortunate and content enough to simply say, “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”