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an Art of Dying fragment
The Art of Dying — A Self-to-Non-Self-Portrait
The Art of Dying (aka My Journey into Stillness), is (until such time as I have perfected the art) a living (pun intended) document, shifting under my feet as I continue to ponder this life and put fingers to keyboard.
It is a portrait of many colored fragments gathered from a life that now, in 2018, is pushing an unlikely, and not a little scary, seventy years.
Initially inspired by the famous Leonardo Da Vinci quote “While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die,” and further propped up by my personal realization that, yes, that is in truth what I, too, have been doing, this self-portrait takes a long and good look at how I have lived this thing.
And when I say fragments, I mean to convey that this is not a narrative starting at birth and ending at death (or as near to death as I can get while still in charge of my fingers), but rather a patchwork quilt of what memories, anecdotes, essays, and vignettes I feel paint a true picture — some, I admit, rendered in more fabulous colors than others (some lies do tell the truth).
This much said, I have divided the overall trajectory into these ten segments:
