The teachers told us the Romans built this place
They built a wall and a temple at the edge of the empire garrison town
They lived and they died, they prayed to their gods
But the stone gods did not make a sound
And their empire crumbled, 'til all that was left
Were the stones the workmen found
-Sting
All This Time
Remember that man lives only in the present, in this fleeting instant; all the rest of his life is either past and gone, or not yet revealed. Short, therefore, is man's life, and narrow is the corner of the earth wherein he dwells.
-Marcus Aurelius
Sitting in this dark office, teeth unbrushed and still in pajamas, thinking I'll come at work a little differently today. Maybe if I frontload my billable time I'll be a little less frenetically engaged in work when P gets home. Then again, I've unfortunately always been one of those guys who shuffles lethargically through the first part of the day, and only hits stride well after lunch. Not a great work pattern if you're married to someone who gets off work at three. I should've lived in Madrid or Lisbon, where not much happens before noon but post-siesta the place comes alive with activity into the evening. Or at least that's what I thought I learned in my snapshot encounters with both places.
How one thinks about time becomes badly skewed by the practice of law. My life is a series of six minute increments, and whenever I set down the dictaphone after burping something legal into the recorder, I assiduously write down my .3 or .4 as if my very life depends on it, which in a way it does. When I'm away from my desk I fret over the moments I could be charging someone for "legal services", to create some letter or brief or motion; spaces of silent contemplation are soon despoiled by the knowledge that during this pause of mental leisure several dozen opposing lawyers are probably working on how to beat and shame me in some future court proceeding. The war doesn't end, until it ends.
And it most certainly does end. Since this past Saturday, my thoughts keep turning back to the tiny old cemetery we drove past on our $360 limo ride through Jersey City, gates pressed against the fringe of Highway One a little north of the Holland Tunnel.
St. Peter's Catholic Cemetery sits wedged between low-rise suburban sprawl and towering industrial towers behind. It's been there since 1849, and apparently still accepts the occasional burial by someone whose family owns a plot. The local Roman Catholic diocese owns and maintains the place, so it's well-groomed even though the monuments show signs of a losing battle with time and vandals.
I set down my red solo cup full of champagne to marvel at the three tall monuments, identical in every way except the Irish surnames at the bottom, that face lugubriously toward the road.
What relationship bound these three families together in life, and then in death? I found nothing on the internet, but surmise they were quite Catholic and quite wealthy. What would they make of their surroundings now, these Irish immigrants who'd made their fortune in the shadow of Manhattan, who no doubt were somebody in their bustling little world before it was transformed by industry and immigration and urban decay into a pungent mosaic of cultures they could never have imagined?
It all hurries by, doesn't it? This life is a tiny space of light and divine energy, but for most of the arc of time we either do not exist at all or are dead, maybe another form of nonexistence. This house is 173 years old, but poor Lucia, the first lady of the house, had barely unpacked before death swept her away, had lived here only a year or so longer than we've been on this Corning adventure. Most of eternity is spent not being at all.
Which makes me question my life, my cares. The Reillys now long decomposed under that marble column carried their own little burdens through life, worried about money and a potentially fatal toothache in that age before penicillin, thought their kids were making bad vocational or marital choices; fretted over half-a-hundred things now so long forgotten they're impossible even to conjure except through the imagination.
But those worries and cares also provide some level of meaning in life--I can't imagine anything more miserable than to shed the structure of work and goals, to wake up and not fret a little about all our kids in this big, blended family, to step back and become some bored, worthless shaman. I guess the trick is to care, to be engaged, to work and love, without taking it too seriously. This moment is too beautiful and too brief to waste it by pretending whatever we're building will remain behind as some sort of legacy.
"Soon you will have forgotten; soon, everyone will have forgotten you." Marcus Aurelius saw it, but most of us avert our eyes. Perhaps it's best to remember that it won't be long until we no longer are, and some cocktail swilling dilettante will one day look down through several feet of sea water at wherever we're buried, maybe on vacation from his date plantation above the Arctic Circle, and wonder whose memorial disappeared under those rising seas, and with what cares we busied ourselves before the entire tableau disappeared into the mists of time.
So I'll spend the day trying to keep that in mind, and trying to benefit the folks who depend on me vocationally and emotionally, worrying a little less about those six minute increments as the race rounds its last bend and I see the finish line I'm in no particular hurry to cross.
Sounds good, but that dictaphone is looking up at me, commanding my attention. I'll do my duty; I just won't delude myself that any of it matters.
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