A Staten Island State of Mind, Part 3

As a general rule I try not to base my life on lyrics to pop tunes but I am inspired by James Taylor's, "The secret of life is to love the passing of time."

Since the passing of time is unchangeable, it's best to embrace, welcome, and enjoy the ride. Here are some things about time's passing I am reminded of while traveling.

1. Slow down. It's an anomaly but I'm in the fastest and busiest city on earth and my take away?  Slow down. Speigelman took 11 years to complete Maus. The Brooklyn bridge took 15 years to complete. Some of those paintings at MET must have taken years. Speedy caricatures and hasty mind dump blogs may have a spontaneity about them but great art and literature need time to percolate. I purpose to work harder and longer on my projects. When. I. Get. Home!

2. Live with infinity. The capacity of the human brain to create, invent, adapt, etc is amazing but no one person can absorb it all. No one person can absorb even one one billonth of what goes on here on planet earth. Even geniuses like Einstein, Newton, and Michaelangelo were a quart low in the human relations department. Nobody is good at everything. I purpose to resign myself to never achieving omniscience!

3. Ants and locusts don't have a leader....nor does NYC. There is no "invisible hand" governing the markets, traffic, skyline, psychology, subway wrecks, and chaos. There is no intelligent designer behind this beehive of screaming, honking, luxuriating, poverty stricken mass of chaos. At least not one that I can see. My conclusion? Figure out what is good, just, humble and do it. I purpose to contribute to the common good despite deus absconditus.

4. Philosophy is a wicked task master.  I've spent most of my life thinking, thinking about thinking, reading to improve my thinking, and thinking about what I read....only to be left with puzzles, enigmas, quandaries, and uncertainties. Even when factoring in personal faith one is still left with mystery. I try not to base my life on cinema, but there's a great line at the end of The Truman Show,  "Lets see what else is on." It's a beautiful tribute to the never ending quest for novelty, distractions, and looking for meaning n all the wrong places. I purpose to quit stressing over the problem of evil and slow down, accept limitations, and do good (see items 1 to 3).

5. Try to stay focused. The odds of me learning acting, movie making, sculpting, etching, bronze work, terra cotta, illustrating children's books, drawing a New Yorker cover, launching a folk music renaissance in Greenwich Village, playing jazz sax at the Apollo, owning a Trump Tower, or getting a piece in the MET are slim. I purpose to reign in my scatter brain.

6. I do try to base my life on God and the book I (and several others) believe contain God's words. It supports the notion that our minds are finite, that of the making of many books there is no end, that we see through a glass darkly. So I embrace my ignorance. A friend quoted Bilbo on this blog a while ago, "It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to." I purpose to live with the unknowing.