No time for anything lately, it seems, not even writing here. To be very busy can be frustrating, tension-causing, but I always think: someday, as I get (hopefully) old, all of these activates and business will just fall away until I am left with little of nothing to do in my life…. The little things will take on so much more meaning…the weather…the coffee in the morning…visits from friends or relatives (if I have any) will mean the greatest excitement.
I used to see this in my grandmother, how, at the twilight of life, with no plans to make, no places to rush to, her world would be so simple, conversation would be the weather or relatives or people at church. Someday, I will be old too, and now when I still have the visa to be in life’s mainstream, when people still listen to me, care about my work and my ideas, when I can still make things happen, and work and get things done, I should enjoy and savor and revel in the intensity—and remember, for someday it will all be a memory, and tension will be the ticking of a pendulum.
To night I visited the opening of a photo show by Melva Moline, department chair. She seemed generally pleased to see me there. No one else from the department showed up. Hmm. The members of that department, frankly, are not delights to behold…. Melva had worked very hard on this show, as she worked very hard in everything she’s done these last 10 years. And I don’t think she has gotten the credit she deserves for it. The upstarts cast the brighter glow, though surely not the deeper one.
—April 24, 1986, Moorhead
OtD 