Life

Life = a Restitution for Wasted Time

Catherine Eisner

Photo credit: Stasis and Motion by Rachel Tanugi Ribas

 

or. . .

 

Reality is that which everything is an instance of.

 

Eli Siegel

One cannot emulate, of course, the sheer undeniability of this Aesthetic Realist poet’s elegant relativist axiom,

but one can die trying.

 

       For example . . .

 

Lifelike is an impossible state;

a wholly inadequate descriptor.

 

Catherine Eisner

 

Waiting undeniably wastes time with the certainty of repetition . . .

 

I wait for the Lord, my soul doth wait, and in His word do I hope. My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning: I say, more than they that watch for the morning. 

 

Psalm 130:5-6 King James Bible 

 

Consider, too, the clever self-referentiality of this casuistry . . .

 

Life has only been created as a stage for the performance of the wonders of Providence. 

 

Naquib Mahfouz (in the ‘fiction’, Respected Sir حضرةالمحترم)

Afterthought: The mood of these thoughts is also echoed in poet Vernon Scannell’s resonant phrase ‘The wounded music of what might have been.’ (See page 2, Too Late Again from Ambit 184, Spring 2006.)