"The Sheltering Sky"

"Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don't know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life.  It's that terrible precision that we hate so much.  But because we don't know, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well.  Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really.  How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it?  Perhaps four or five times more.  Perhaps not even. How many more times will you watch a full moon rise?  Perhaps twenty.  And yet it all seems limitless."

Peter Bowles

The Sheltering Sky

Is it such a bad thing that life seems limitless?  Can we have consciousness, awareness and still feel the boundless hope of fulfillment?  If we aren't drunk with denial we can savor every drop and still feel satisfied with what is left in the cup....a life full of love is never empty, never limited but those precious moments need to be cherished, their fruit are our memories.   I met a man this summer, here in our small town, who told me how he lived his memories now. Because of his illness his world had gotten very small, very slow, his memories were the food he survived on, his story, his connection to the etherealness of life...not a shadow but a whispered story told by his heart to his soul.