Art Attack Central

Fixing stuff, myself included…


Heart

My friend Abbott is home after spending three days in the hospital. He did not have the angioplasty, because it turns out that was just about as risky as not having it. He’s not a young guy, buy rather a very young 80 year old guy. We had dinner last night in one of our favorite Korean restaurants (Niwana on 33rd St.) and I asked him what he thought was his greatest adventure. “Well probably one night in Batum on the coast of the Black Sea when we had to…, or I might have to say it was one night in the mid fifties when we found the… in Tehran”. He traveled extensively up until about 10 years ago. The …s are things I can’t tell you, but I can tell you they’re not war stories, although he has plenty of those including a bullet wound and being run over by a tank during the battle of the bulge.

Why are you telling us this?

I guess, because as I witness his struggle to survive and appreciate the incredible life he has led, I struggle with my own delusions of life everlasting. And, since it’s not demonstrably ongoing I feel a sense of urgency to make the very most of what I have. Now if I could live with that attitude on a moment by moment basis, in other words keeping that idea constantly in my awareness I just might be able to live a life worth living.

So?

If we are always struggling to keep up with what we’ve left behind, or failed to remember then we don’t have time to live while we’re living.

Where are you going with this?

That’s just the point exactly. Sometimes it’s the getting going that takes you away from the being there. I know that sounds simple, but there are future/imagined future things that set themselves in front of the present. In a convoluted way that makes sense, because of course the future is always in front of the present.

“It’s always too early to quit.”

–Norman Vincent Peale

Link

“Designated driver, on the information highway.”