Borges story bought to my mind, Töre intense renewal of his faith in Virgin Springs.

At the edge of death, Bill the protagonist of Don Hertzfeldt's It's Such a Beautiful Day suddenly sees the world in a whole new light. It is frightening that humans seem to find renewed vigor for life only when they face how little time they have left.

In four thousand weeks, Oliver Bukerman talks about how starting from a base of hopelessness is actually freeing. The finitude of living is what makes our choices and actions matter.

As Borges says in his short story, What will die with me the day I die? What pathetic or frail image will be lost to the world?

The complete story:

In a stable that stands almost in the shadow of the new stone church, a man with gray eyes and gray beard, lying amid the odor of the animals, humbly tries to will himself into death, much as a man might will himself to sleep. The day, obedient to vast and secret laws, slowly shifts about and mingles the shadows in the lowly place; outside lie plowed fields, a ditch clogged with dead leaves, and the faint track of a wolf in the black clay where the line of woods begins. The man sleeps and dreams, forgotten.

The bells for orisons awaken him. Bells are now one of evening’s customs in the kingdoms of England, but as a boy the man has seen the face of Woden, the sacred horror and the exultation, the clumsy wooden idol laden with Roman coins and ponderous vestments, the sacrifice of horses, dogs, and prisoners. Before dawn he will be dead, and with him, the last eyewitness images of pagan rites will perish, never to be seen again. The world will be a little  poorer when this Saxon man is dead.

Things, events, that occupy space yet come to an end when someone dies may make us stop in wonder—and yet one thing, or an infinite number of things, dies with every man’s or woman’s death, unless the universe itself has a memory, as theosophists have suggested. In the course of time there was one day that closed the last eyes that had looked on Christ; the Battle of Junin and the love of Helen died with the death of one man. What will die with me the day I die? What pathetic or frail image will be lost to the world? The voice of Macedonia Fernandez, the image of a bay horse in a vacant lot on the corner of Sarrano and Charcas, a bar of sulfur in the drawer of a mahogany desk?

It’s the very last thing, isn’t it, we feel grateful for: having happened. You know, you needn’t have happened. You needn’t have happened. But you did happen. - DOUGLAS HARDING

Nothing brings focus to the finicky nature of time like having a newborn. Time is all we think about. Like ouroboros, it eats itself up. All these moments, slip by. Lost in the river of life. Watching it at five in the morning while feeding a two month old, cuts deep.

Mike Mills made a delightful little movie, cmon cmon about being a parent. He weaves the story with collaborations with writers and storytellers. One of those collaborations is Star Child by Claire A. Nivola.

There is a glint of the lament Borges protagonist shouts out in his short story, witness

What will die with me the day I die? What pathetic or frail image will be lost to the world?

To visit planet earth, you will have to be born as a human child.

At first you will have to learn to use your new body. To move your arms and legs. To pull yourself upright. You will learn to walk, and run. To use your hands. To make sounds and form words.

Slowly you will learn to take care of yourself.

Here it is still and peaceful. But there, the colours, sensations and sounds will wash over you constantly. You will see so many living things – plants and animals beyond imagining.

Here it is always the same. But there, everything is in motion. Everything is always changing.

You will be plunged into the earth's river of time.

There will be so much for you to learn. And, so much for you to feel. Pleasure and fear. Joy and disappointment. Sadness and wonder.

In your confusion and delight you will forget where you came from. You will grow up, travel and work.

Perhaps you will have children or grandchildren of your own.

Over the years you will try to make sense of that happy, sad, full, empty, always shifting life you are in.

And, when the time comes to return to your star, it maybe hard to say goodbye to that strangely beautiful world.

David Foster Wallace (whose Infinite Jest was such an intricately crafted book) 2005 Kenyon College graduation address has a permanent residence in a deep corner of my mind. Every couple of years reminding me, "This is water".

Audio links of keynote speech

This is Water Part 1

This is Water Part 2

Wallace starts the story off with two young fish swimming along, when they come across an older fish. The older fish goes, "Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”

Water, Wallace tells us in simple awareness. Awareness of what is essential and true. In the deep trenches of adulthood, our attention is hijacked by forces all around us. Making us "worship" what they deem is important for us to worship.

The real value of education and understanding to think, is keeping this awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, in daily consciousness.

Of reminding ourselves, This is water

A creeping sense of finitude is ever persistent when you have a child. Particularly, in the first few weeks when you lose complete sense of time.

I have been reading Donald Hall's essays after eighty and carnival of losses. A deeply personal reflections of a poet when he is in his 80s and 90s.

I came across this poem of his from when he was lot younger.

My son, my executioner,
      I take you in my arms,
Quiet and small and just astir
And whom my body warms.

Sweet death, small son, our instrument
     Of immortality,
Your cries and hunger document
Our bodily decay.

We twenty-five and twenty-two
     Who seemed to live forever
Observe enduring life in you
And start to die together.

can’t procrastinate love