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February 06, 2010
Older, but none the wiser
The first chapter of Nabokov's inspired memoir 'Speak, Memory' opens with:
"The CRADLE ROCKS above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for (at some forty-five hundred heart-beats an hour).
Tomorrow is my birthday.
A simple arithmetical calculation tells me that I shall be about 40 million heartbeats older than a year ago; and a rather unthinkable ( and certainly unspeakable!) number of heartbeats away from that miraculous, yet so commonplace, event - a birth. By the way, no, I didn't actually work out that astronomical figure... What's in it for me?
As for that great unknowable day of eventual return to darkness, to paraphrase St Augustine:
God, teach me to contemplate it, but not yet..
I might be older but, sadly, none the wiser.
Posted by Marzena at February 6, 2010 09:25 PM