Thursday, January 14, 2021

Hilton Head Island: off

 6 PM.  The sun has set.  The sky and Skull Creek have lingering shades of peach and gold.

I look out on beauty.  I hear beauty.  I am listening to Max Richter’s audacious and successful recomposition of Vivaldi’s FOUR SEASONS.  Yet I am having an off day.  For no reason, which is perhaps all the more troubling.  I have access to more money than I need.  I am with Carol.  I am in extraordinary good health for an old man.


Perhaps the FOUR SEASONS is the clue.  I wanted to create something that lasted as did Vivaldi.


I look up from my iPad on which I am typing.  The colors have deepened.  The contrast between dying light and silhouetted live oak trees greater and even more beautiful.


The body of an athlete, the soul of a poet, the mind of a scientist.  That might even be true.


Of the mind of a scientist I have always liked to quantify and as a teenager I quantified what I wanted from life.  I wanted the love of one woman and I wanted to write something that would last a thousand years, having concluded that if a work of art lasts a thousand years, it will last forever.  ‘Forever’ being defined in human terms.


So I have been loved by many women, or like to believe I have, but my words and voyages will not long outlive me.


Is this the cause of my malaise?  That I will not be immortal?  I do not know and I do not expect sympathy.  There are greater problems in the world.


Perhaps I am just having an off day.

2 comments:

ZMK said...

“The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea.”

― Isak Dinesen

wallawallabob said...

Yes I agree Just an off day my friend
Yes your accomplishments Will last a thousand years
Google Webb Chiles, what you find will be there until Google is Shut Down
and more than likely half those Women didn’t love you it was probably lust
Yes you are just having an off day
San Diego was like fuzz on a peach today