From Whence to Wither...Why So Soon?

Procrastination. A useful tool to put off the doing that should be done. I've found it too useful a tool. To my detriment, I put off having to do or be. I'd much rather be back then or somewhere next week and procrastination amends that necessity to address the moment, or more specifically, to confront the shoice of what to do with this moment right now.

Punctual. Sigh. Rhymes with unctual and to the unctuous punctuality belongs because the unctuous manipulate choice driving the moment in their direction willfully oblivious to anyone else. No, I'm not given to punctuality. I prefer to think of deadlines as rubber, action items are intentions that pave the road to you-know-where, and the "appointed time" as an exaltation of obsessive behavior.

Physics. I'm comforted in knowing that my nature is in sync with the fundamentals of Physics in that I, too, prefer to conserve momentum at every opportunity. Nature conserves energy by selecting lower ionization levels, opting for the 120 polygon whenever solidifying, and never ever warming up, just colding down. It is not just a nice savings in energy, but a logical savings in time.

Time. Let's face it, time is an Earthling construct that oppresses everything in the universe , so unless you're asking the Big Question, "How did we get here?" there's no real reason to fuss about time. Besides if the biggest thing we know of--the universe--can exist regardless of our long it takes our little stone to travel around its star, then does it really matter if I wear a watch or not, or keep a dayminder, or write little notes on the kitchen calendar?

Languish. Granted, procrastination can get costly. The not doing what should be done exacts its toll in having to otherwise deal with its clutter, which is why the storage business will always fluorish. I wasn't thinking of avoiding choice, conserving energy, or affirming my lack of obsessive behaviors when I finally got around to unpacking a box of astronomy books someone had salvaged and handed off to me some years after my father's passing. That box languished in several storage sheds, in my sister's garage, our garage, and finally in my office before I thought to open it. I can't even tell you that I was curious about the box's contents. I wasn't. I did find it curious that an 1889 edition of Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat was sandwiched between Hoyle and Stellafane. I tried to remember who Mr. Khayyam was. Didn't he write the Deteriorata? No, that was Tony Hendra. Oh right, maybe it was the Desiderata. Wrong again. That was Max Ehrmann in 1927. I knew that Jack Sparrow had something to do with the Deteriorata, or was it the Desiderata?

Mr Khayyam was born in 1047 CE in Khorassan, what is now northern Iran. The Rubaiyat is more properly a rubaiyat, the word referring to a poetic format instead of a descriptive title. He studied mathematics and astronomy and was employed as such for a long while before he tried his hand at poetry. I swept the dust off this little brown volume and carefully opened its pages. As atoms will do, in some shrodingerling way, the pages fluttered then settled open with the following verse in suspiciously plain view...

To the lip of this earthen bowl did I lean,
The secret of my life to learn
And lip to lip it murmured,
"While you live, drink and drink full,
For once dead you never shall return."

You might ask what this all means. I don't really know. I don't know what to think of a dusty volume opening in such a way as to imply that I better start living now. Kurt Vonnegut would speak of such events as random acts of deliberation that had nothing to do with luck or the divine. Far from being mere coincidence, energies intersected and in doing so balance things out. So the energy packing the box--the in-to--intersected with the energy I spent unpacking the box--the out-to? Does this mean that somehow the energies of the past finally connected me to the energies languishing right now, in the Self? Maybe I should just quit here while the deep is still shallow and simply welcome you to a place I hope will serve up some exploration and comment you may find amusing, perhaps interesting, provided I don't procrastinate.