Procrastination
December 15th, 2011 9:59:08 pm pst by Sterling CamdenA fly’s eyes
Multi-faceted, complex, and ugly
the right one clears, then they both disappear
A line of hieroglyphics, the heqa-crook
Nefertiti and a sphinx with Tutankhamen’s head
The sphinx, the sphinx
The riddle of the sphinx
Not a very clever riddle
Except for the third leg
Does the riddle have anything to do with it?
NO!
The old man with a staff
Brain partially exposed
Drooling
Hair missing
Eyes falling out
Try to make him move forward, so difficult
No, don’t try
Just watch
He suddenly turns to bones that collapse and clatter on the floor
I walk over and grab his staff
Then beat his bones to powder with it
I walk away with his stick
Humming a tune
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Interesting. Not letting the past dictate what you’re left with – so different from the way we’re accustomed to letting things happen, is it not?
That’s an interesting and refreshing take on it. I’ve been thinking that the old man is an image of myself that I fear — unable to move, and therefore worthless. But I didn’t have a clear idea about the meaning of the ending. Thanks!
We get a lot of things from our past. Expectations about our own old age, or the values we ascribe to that state, for instance. So it could be either way, and both.
This made me think of the members of the Rolling Stones : they are probably not the kind of old men they expected old men to be, before they were old themselves. That’s the funny thing about life, we don’t have to accept the roles we are offered, and sometimes happiness is in scorning them – and sometimes it is in embracing them.
As self-evident as that seems, it’s a lesson I’ve been slow to learn all my life. I’ve tended to follow a role strictly for as long as I could tolerate it, then suddenly rebel and destroy everything in an iconoclastic fury. It’s only been recently that I’ve been able to understand at a practical level that it doesn’t have to be either extreme — that we can (and do) choose every individual, minute act of conforming or departing. Real freedom is not being forced to make an all-or-nothing decision.