Art Attack Central

Fixing stuff, myself included…


Changing Gears

My best friend is having angioplasty today; I hope the doctors know what they’re doing. Everyone assures me it’s quite effective, and the risks are not too high. Not too high? One of the risks is a stroke. I know this guy would rather die of a heart attack than to be mentally incapacitated by a stroke; however, a risk of stroke is acceptable if taking no action means certain death by heart attack. Statistics become meaningless when you reach the age of mortality.

What age is that?

Is it when I become anxious about other people dying, that I see my own death revealed in a convex mirror? Why convex instead of concave? Because convex is an outward movement, explosion rather than implosion. Life begins to bulge, swirling around a mid point. It is no longer a flat horizontal plane; the swirling patterns are at first hard to decipher. As one becomes accustomed to the new structure it appears to slows down. Perhaps it’s that we speed up to be better able to read the ever changing circular configuration. It might be like forming a permanently open synaptic gap between your short term memory and your long term memory. Not at all like dragging around a ball and chain, but rather more like being a reflective ball. There is no one dragging and nothing to drag.

“The observation of others is colored by our inability to observe ourselves impartially. We can never be impartial about anything until we can be impartial about our own organism.”

–A. R. Orage

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“Designated driver, on the information highway.”