What an interesting thing, for lack of better words, to self-observe that the time left is shorter than the time I have lived. I associate to the lines in Julius Caesar that mark Cassius as a man who “dost think too much.” I think too much, too much. I remember my mother many decades ago labeling me, in effect, as too heavy for some work and to light for other work, in other words her unwarranted and unnecessary depressive description of me as useless. So I became a teacher, there you go. There is some truth in therapeutic circles that the neurotic builds castles in the sky and that the psychotic lives in them. Or, that the neurotic is a failed artist for he cannot do in life what he really feels he would want to do, thus is frustrated, while the real artist lives all through the day and night and he creates. Lucky is the artist.
The title here betrays my intent, for we are truly time beings. Encapsulated genomic creatures, ruled by genes existentially indifferent to themselves and to us, we are each given a continuum of time to make do with as we like — piss it away, manufacture things and pleasure, be cruel and indifferent, the entire panoply of human differentiation and it all comes to an end. And so I sit here, this mortal sack of shit and bone, contemplating what I have done as a time being
Absolutely not much given the measure of time here on this globe and absolutely nothing with many zeros after it in terms of the indifferent universe. And my mind bobs like those stupid toys on the back seat windows, puzzled by it all, condemned by time to finish the game. I could inflict my own idiosyncratic meaning on it, the one I have lived with for so many years and within those terms choose or decide what is to be done with the time left to me. And since meaning is part and parcel of this species, I could also choose not to give intention to my being, just coast along, like feathers on a wing, insubstantial fluff.
The whole concept as presented here is befuddlement. I back myself into a corner and the only thing I have is choice and that very choice does not resolve anything; it is a temporary prosthesis. As a time being, I can only go along for the ride, like going down a flue in a water park — not much control over that except the avoidance and struggle not to be inundated. Answers for me cannot compete against the relentless self-questioning of how I am to “use” my time — although like our genes, time uses us. Got that! The entire elementary school system should be geared to helping young ones understand and “use” time. Anyone using a cellphone dispatches time in the delusion he or she is manipulating it for self puposes.
Time is the self-globule that blows each of us across our short journeys.
Of late as I near my end I wonder not about a bucket list, a craven cultural artifact that turns life into a wish-list of hedonism and wish-fulfillment. Consider the latent anxiety in not finishing the bucket list. Then, what? I am dwelling these past few weeks if not months in the passage of time as I have lived it, in the remembrance of things past, of what was not done as much as what was done, of the waste of each of our lives, how we foolishly, unwillingly and unintentionally expunge time from ourselves like so much grime from our wrists and hands with soap. And so I stand in the realization that I am 72 and how in the world did I reach this age and who in the world was living in my body as time rushed ahead, carrying me like so many leaves and twigs on its back? Am I detritus? You got it, baby!
Time weighs heavily on me. (I think as soon as one is awake in life time should be weighed heavily each and every day.)I would like to spend the time left to me with intention, creativity and sharing what I have learned about my sojourn on this gorgeous planet savaged by homo sapiens. Equally weighing on me is all that I have learned and no where to unburden my insights, smarts, or know-how. Apparently it is not wanted.
Parenthetically, in Nevada I have discovered that to give one must be aggressive, or to give is not acceptable unless asked for. Nevada is a state of anomie as well as a a state of anomie. What stays in Vegas truly is not registered in Vegas, that’s why it’s safe here. And so I turn inward, searching for that inflection within,that crinkum-crankum of mind that might lead me into new discoveries of my time here. Each day that passes I feel a kind of regret or ruefulness, of something unlived or undone. It is hard work to stay awake in life, often I snore off.
The cast of my mind prevents me from falling into retirement and all the crap that entails — just look at all the claptrap listed in catalogs for senior citizens (argh!). Apparently, in this degraded culture, it is time in which you fill yourself up. I think life is metabolizing experience, and not storage. The elderly often act or feel they are late stage silos. So, true to who I am, I am again a stranger in a strange land. I don’t buy into retirement, I don’t buy into the horrific cultural conditioning we smear onto one another because we are slaves of one kind or another. We pursue happiness, a dreadful task — Jefferson’s unfortunate phrase, for pursuit in itself is wasted expenditure. We are not helped to become aware, awake and to feel which is counterproductive to a capitalistic system. I have always felt out of joint, much akilter.
This kind of personal essay resolves nothing except to be topographical. As a time being pushed and shoved along by aging, disease, years, diet, cause and effect, indifference like a bystander at a death camp, I may existentially choose to just go with it, not to resist, in fact, many of us, including me, have allowed that for years so that, like me, we wake up and wonder what’s it all about, Alfie? I’ve been cursed or blessed by the recognition that tempus fugit for a very long time now and even with that awareness I have not broken through the time bubble.
So, for the time being. . .
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