Time wounds all heels

"...I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire...I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all of your breath trying to conquer it. Because no battle is ever won he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools."


? William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury

I'm struggling with time at the moment. I remarked the other day that I feel as if I'm just marking time, waiting for extinction and that's pretty much the case. I lack purpose, i perceive no future. Career and marriage are behind me and my most important purpose, that of father, is nearly done - I'm at the letting go and launching stage. I have no shortage of interests, hopes, ambitions but they are thwarted by my decaying nervous and skeletal systems and by poverty. I try to learn from Jake and live in the moment, with some success, but it is undermined by limitation and frustration. This is the crisis that overtakes so many when, after a life spent busily living, retirement torpedoes purpose. In my case it has overtaken me a couple of decades too soon, not as a sudden crisis, more the constant gnawing of sharp little teeth.