Beneath the Vast Indifference of Heaven

I am, in the event you had not yet noticed, a HUGE fan of the late Warren Zevon. Today's title has a lot more to do with my fondness for that turn of phrase, as reflected as one of his song titles, than in any particular reference to a topic I was pretending to think about. It's a peg upon which nothing hangs, which I'd like to think, from what I remember of conversing with Zevon (when he toured in support of Excitable Boy) he would have appreciated.

Mondays are hard for me to get any traction--it turns out there's 'stuff' from most previous Fridays that I, apparently, thought would accomplish itself over the weekend. When I get to Monday and still have loose ends from the previous week, I'm always surprised (and, because I have to devote some time on Monday to catching up, I then fall behind on the current week even as it's just getting started). Sort of like Wimpy through the Looking Glass: I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today (which actually sounds a lot like our current national fiscal concerns or, on a more local level, how we buy/pay for fire fighting equipment).

Maybe you, too-I get so caught up in the process of 'getting through each day', I lose sight of their purpose, their point or the opportunities that each one brings. There are days I regard every ringing of the phone with dread--'what fresh new Hell? (killer illustration btw)' which I think we'd agree is stupid. Neither of us will ever again have Monday, 28 January, 2008 (unless we travel at supersonic speed from West to East around the world and cross the international dateline in reverse, and even then I'm not sure if you get your money back or if there's just one ride and the direction is of no consequence).

I worry (more than) a little about this stuff because, at closer to 56 years old than away from it, I'm starting to spend more time worrying about aging (the good news, as my evil twin, skippy, might point out, is I will continue to age whether I worry about it or not) and when the day draws to a close, I experience more often than not a greater pang of regret for what I failed to do than of relief for having successfully navigated the minefield of the day itself. I sometimes forget, but hope you don't, that it isn't the number of days that make up a life, but the amount of life in the number of days. With all of our science and technological innovations, we've yet to devise a means of recapturing the space between the time gone by. We worry far too much about how our passing may affect those whom we know and love, when what we should be concerned about is the impact our living has. And life goes on within you and without you, beneath the vast indifference of heaven.
-bill kenny