Sunday, October 4, 2015

Ovid's "Metamorphoses: XV" - Speaking of Death and Time

Time is something we never seem to have enough of and death is something that awaits us all.  Both have been on my mind this morning.  It is Sunday and my weekend is almost over and then it is back to work tomorrow and there was so much more I wanted to accomplish in my "two days off" but here it is, Sunday afternoon, and I'm just getting around to doing some of what should have already been done.  I need more time!

Death is something I've had coming  up in almost every single month of this year.  Friends are passing on.  Family and people I've admired are passing on.  It makes me sit up and take note of my own mortality and wonder how much time I have to accomplish those things I feel I must?  I need more time!

So, I grabbed a book from my library this morning, looking for some inspiration and noticed a page I'd bookmarked on another day that I can't remember.  Wouldn't you know it is about time and death?  (Expect a miracle and don't discount it!)  I opened to Ovid's poem Metamorphoses: XV where he is talking of the teachings of Pythagoras:

"O mortals,
Dumb in cold fear of death, why do you tremble
At Stygian rivers, shadows, empty name,
The lying stock of poets, and the terrors
Of a false world? I tell you that your bodies
Can never suffer evil, whether fire
Consumes them, or the waste of time.  Our souls
Are deathless; always, when they leave our bodies."

 He goes on to say:

"All things are always changing,
But nothing dies. The spirit comes and goes,
...but always it keeps on living."

"Full sail, I voyage
Over the boundless ocean, and I tell you
Nothing is permanent in all the world.
All things are fluent; every image forms,
Wandering through change. Time is itself a river
In constant movement, and the hours flow by
Like water, wave on wave, pursued, pursuing
Forever fugitive, forever new.
That which has been, is not; that which was not,
Begins to be; motion and moment always
In process of renewal."

Did I mention this was written in 6 BC?  It is an amazing poem and the book I picked up was "The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces"  and I have had it since my college days and have referred to it now and again over the years. (English Literature class at San Diego City College)

So, the soul lives on and time is an illusion.  Nothing new under the sun is there?

We had a nice storm blow through last night and today, my landscaper came and we did some cleaning up and everything looks good again.  All the trees shook off their dead limbs and no one was hurt so it's all good!  I sat in my car for a while this morning after taking a ride down Buford Dam Road which is really pretty ride through lots of green trees and I felt refreshed and rejuvenated when I got back so I just sat there, watching the trees dance as the wind blew through them. 

Sunday, the beginning of a new.  The end of the old.  Time flows on and today, I expected a miracle and I was not disappointed.  Today was awesome and the best is yet to come.  And so it is!

Expect a miracle, my friends.  You won't be disappointed.



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