Intake

Oh, so many things to take in over the past 24 hours. Last night, my friend Hope took me to see Cat Power at the Fillmore ("to cheer you up," she said, which makes me wonder how down I've seemed lately). Whatever the reeason, I'm glad she persuaded me to go (easy to do: just hand me a ticket and say 'here'). Chan Marshall's such a lovely singer, and so endearingly awkward on stage (usually the awkwardness of others bothers me -- I'm so shy and clumsy myself that I find it excruciating when it's reflected back at me. But this was just such an honest and straightforward awkwardness, it was welcoming).

Then tonight we went and saw Vajra Sky at the Rec Vic on Haight Street, followed by drinks and food at the Alembic. Plus to top it all off I'm reading Seneca's "On the Shortness of Life," from which I get this morsel:

Of all people only those are at leisure who make who make time for philosophy, only those are really alive. For they not only keep a good watch over their own lifetimes, but annex every age to theirs. All the years that have passed before them are added to their own. Unless we are very ungrateful, all those distinguished founders of holy creeds were born for us and prepared for us a way of life. By toil of others we are led into the presence of things which have been brought from darkness into light. We are excluded from no age, but we have access to them all; and if we are prepared in loftiness of mind to pass beyond the narrow confines of human weakness, there is a long period of time through which we can roam. We can argue with Socrates, express doubt with Carneades, cultivate retirement with Epicurus, overcome human nature with the Stoics, and exceed limits with the Cynics. Since nature allows us to enter into a partnership with every age, why not turn from this brief and transient spell of time and give ourselves wholeheartedly to the past, which is limitless and eternal and can be shared with better folk than we?

What more can I add to that? Sometimes you just gotta be mute.