Like the Lady of Shalott, I sit here on my little "island" watching the bustling world on the river and in the mirror of the Internet. What a contrast to my previous hyperactive life when, already aware of life's brevity, I tried to do as many things as possible and to live a dozen lives at once.
I look back to that hectic journey, which now is little more than the accumulation of memories that prove it occurred, with some grief of the price I paid and the price I made others pay. But there is no going back; this has to be it for me. Intimations of my own mortality arrive almost daily, either in my own slowing or the sickness and ultimate demise of those I have known.
I once worked it out that we're born with about 700,000 hours to live. Of this we spend roughly one-third sleeping and another 20,000 or 50,000 hours, depending on our bowel movements, sitting on the dunny. Which doesn't leave all that many hours which are really useful to us. Perhaps I was, after all, right to have lived such a hyperactive life?
Oh, and yes, I did read Jessica Anderson's novel.
| Health nuts are going to feel stupid one day, lying in hospital dying of nothing. |
