Shards
Shards
January 28, 2020. I am 72 years old. January 6, the culmination of an attempted overthrow of the government was just a few weeks ago. The pandemic is still raging. I have been a shut in with the exception of some socially distanced walks and bicycle rides.
Shards
I have had a new feeling, a new awareness, a nothingness, impossible to describe but let me try.
Image disconnected large 4 foot long shards of graphite densely scattered, representing time and consciousness. No sense of continuity, no sense of the flowing of time. All my memories are shards of graphite destroyed for all existence. Fond memories are re-experienced as experiences that ended in the chaos of failure and decomposition.
I guess this is what to expect when everything is nothingness.
Dualism has always haunted me. The humiliations and shame that we feel are routed in a sense of dualism. The emotions from the humiliations and shame have softened. I am not sure that it is because of my efforts or effects of time. Either way the needs of the ego and body has waned.
I got my Covid- 19 shot Friday. I feel a greater sense of freedom approaching. I think of my time in Santa Monica and Marina del Rey, of playing volleyball, tennis and biking along the beach path. It was a time when summer lasted all year long and then I look in the mirror and at my pedometer. The days when I would pack up my 280 Z with all my belongings and go where the road takes me. The days when I was an Adonis and could play all day, all night long. Now a road trip by myself is unimaginable. Now as in the book Illusions I am always looking for a place to land even when I imagine flying.
I think back to grade school. As school closed a magical time appeared. Time stood still. Each day lasted indefinitely and the start of the new school year was never a thought. For many years now I have felt that the rest of my life was less time that a single summertime of my youth. As most of you know this feeling continues to increase exponentially.
March 22, 2021
Sometimes it feels as though it is time to make my dying declaration then I remember...
There is always some specific moment when we become aware that our youth is gone; but, years after, we know it was much later.
Mignon McLaughlin