Sunday, April 6, 2008

Mythtaken For Time

Dear Children:

Blurting it out may be best: I only lost two pounds in the last two weeks. In about 180 weeks, I’ll be back to my original weight of 6lbs, 10oz. That really isn’t so horrifying a fact if it weren’t for an unspecified fact behind the fact behind the fact.

There’s this friend that says I’m too focused on weight and that weight is a stand-in for something I don’t want to reveal. So, the way this guy postulates it, I keep the conversation pointed to weight instead of the more solemn issues in my life. Fair enough … maybe. Let’s see.

Its true I wouldn’t care what the scale said if the mirror said something more gratifying. It’s also true that I shouldn't care about either the scale or the mirror if I weren’t in fear for my life. That’s why I quit smoking. I didn’t want to die an early, grisly, painful, expensive, hacking death. Still, I may not care about dying so much if I felt better about circumstances in general. There is so much unfinished business. There is so much to resolve. There are too many injuries to heal both of the afflicted sort and the afflictive sort. There is so much art and love and sorrow and mourning to express. Where will the time come from?

Maybe it’s more complicated than that. Time may be a stand-in for a substitute for a surrogate for a proxy. Who knows? What is it?

That’s the fact I’m getting at: the one behind the fact behind the fact.

But I do like the idea of time a lot. For now, though, time is a commodity. All the great scriptures teach otherwise of course. God is The Potentate of Time and will one day abolish it in favor of a stress free eternity. We just flat needn’t worry about time and, without that worry, what is there to worry about.

For us, in this life, time is truly a commodity and there are no shortages of things to worry over. As such, time can be wasted, spent, juggled and ignored. The only thing we cannot do is preserve time. There is no bank that will take it into deposit and promise an increase. Neither can we barter, legate, bailment nor will it over to another generation. It is our commodity for our personal use and not valid in transfer.

Never put off for tomorrow those things you have no intention of doing at all.

I’m just spit balling here, but if time is proxy for fitness I got me all the time in the world. It’s a beautiful thought. Lets try it on for size anyway.

The ipod has been playing Jelly Roll Morton. They called him Jelly Roll for a reason other than the fact that his momma named him Ferdinand. In any case, The Jelly Roll Blues is thought to be the first jazz music ever published. He may not have been the father for there were many parents but he attended the birth of jazz. Over the last ninety years or so, the songs have not lost their freshness, their energy or their grit. We call them songs even though the lyrics were severely subordinated to the music and the scoring. I love them all although there is one particular favorite called Hyena Stomp where the lyrics consist exclusively of the most wonderful full-throated, head back belly laughter.

Much Love,

Poppy

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