By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.~ Genesis 3:19 ~
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, often uttered in funeral services, originated with the Bible, Genesis 3:19. The cyclical nature of human experience, originating from and returning to God/ Nature, is a concept widely embraced today. The Bible is among the most prolific sources of ideas and phrases in modern literature. For that reason, alone, it would have behooved me to study English translations of the Bible in years past; not as a religious text, but as a way to understand the origin of some of the most common phrases in the English language. Unfortunately, I did not study it; neither as a religious resource nor as a literary reference. But I absorbed bits and pieces of its significance to literature by learning of its connection through various book titles: East of Eden; The Grapes of Wrath; The Sun Also Rises; The Skin of Our Teeth; Like a Lamb to Slaughter; In the Beginning; Let Us Now Praise Famous Men; and on and on and on. Though I look upon biblical stories (with which I am only vaguely familiar…and with only a few) as simply allegories or fables, many of them document the foundations of generally-accepted principles of modern morality. The language of religion, whether one likes it or not, forms part of the bedrock of civilization today. That makes the subject worth knowing…and least more completely than I know it.
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Mornings are my times for writing; I make that claim regularly. In reality, though, mornings are my time for thinking; cogitating; wondering; questioning; day-dreaming; reflecting; giving my introspective self time to explore who’s inside; other mental self-examinations…and a little writing on the side. The writing probably is just a justification for the thinking—otherwise, observers of my thinking might see me sitting at my desk, motionless, and assume me to be in a catatonic state. And perhaps that’s exactly the state I am in: Catatonia. It’s a place near the intersection of the border between Algeria and Honduras; just south of the shared border between the Suez Canal and the Sun. It’s hard to find the place, unless you take the bridge between Christchurch, New Zealand and Ascunción, Paraguay.
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I interrupted my blogging to shower and shave in preparation for this morning’s radiation treatment. There’s little need to shave these days, as my always-thin beard is more sparse and thinner than ever, but I shave every few days, anyway. And then, of course, I forgot I was in the midst of writing a blog post. I’m back, albeit only briefly, to put this to bed. I feel weaker than I’d like, but that sensation will disappear after I rehydrate myself. It is not easy to remain hydrated, especially when one’s intake versus outgo of liquid is out of kilter in the wrong direction. As much as I am not especially enamored of chemically-modified water in the form of Propel high-cost water, it does seem to restore stolen or otherwise missing electrolytes.
