On rather random
accumulations some might want to call ‘legacy.’
I realized that my quest to 'make my mark,'
whatever that is, something like scratching mud… …in other words not a particularly
lasting mark… …will require some effort to organize; to gather a rather random
accumulation some might want to call a legacy. One will therefore want to
organize material in such a way that will keep my son or grandson from throwing
away a box that contains my stains.
We've gone through our early lives not knowing
what it means to say that life is short, while knowing that our delusions of
grandeur truly contain delusion. But the size of the importance, though we knew
to be small, is so dramatically smaller than we thought; we knew it to require
something of a magnifying glass not available to us, but really it's more
quark-like than we could possibly accept, or thereby face paralyzation
by way of futility. It's akin to the raison d'être for parenthood, perhaps a
secondary impetus, the primary being to produce someone to serve at the
death-bedside, but the secondary motivation, because one is sort of obligated
as a child to keep the box that contains the legacy of your parents from
anonymous dissipation in a thrift store or deeper oblivion. And so I thought
I'd better work on the quality of that box. In other words, it kind of comes
down to the presentation, to keep one's legacy from the dump, preserved by the
last party, the party of the blood, which is also as fragile as fertility and
circumstance allow.
