Ossification

In my 100th post, which now seems so long ago, I quoted Leibniz's words: "Whatever acts cannot be destroyed." If a thing has motion, it exists and continues to do so.

As I grow older, this has become more and more important. When not in motion, muscles tire from inactivity and get stiff. When stiff, they seem harder to coax back to life. I am turning into a rock, a fossil, an ossuary of my own bones.

I need to keep moving. It is not elegantly expressed, that thought. I do not want to become an abandoned house while still alive, I do not want to become a waterfall of stone.

Tennyson expressed it with more passion, more beauty:

I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone...

I must keep moving. I must.

Moving Along

At 0400h this morning, I officially completed moving house for the eighth time in my life. All the while, I determinedly stuck to my plan of deliberate packing, placement and unpacking. And everything more-or-less worked out, even my rewiring. But in the face of this admittedly traumatic event, I discovered a kind of Zen-like detachment as I threw out stuff and ignored the world of work.

Meanwhile, somewhere at the back of my mind, some lyrics just refused to stop playing...

It seems such a waste of time
If that's what it's all about
If that's movin' up then I'm movin' out.

(from 'Anthony's Song' in Billy Joel's album The Stranger)

This one reminds me of a certain Mosaic individual:

Moving along in our God-given ways,
Safety is sat by the fire,
Sanctuary from these feverish smiles,
Left with a mark on the door,
Is this the gift that I wanted to give?

(from 'Passover' in Joy Division's album Closer)