Whew! I spent most of today cleaning/polishing the new Escort. What a job! Nearly broke my back. But it's really shiny and clean now, and since no one but myself will be in it, it should stay that way for some time to come.

I also went on my bike ride early this morning, and again had to ride in the streets. However, I didn't ride as many miles as usual, and came back a bit sooner. My knees seem to be bothering me, which is the result of riding up the steep, steep hills on the streets, instead of the park -- which has inclines, but not such taxing hills.

I finished the novel, "A Thousand Country Roads" by Robert James Waller last night. It was okay, nothing to brag about. Except near the end the character, Robert Kincaid, is speaking to his recently arrived son (who he didn't know existed earlier) and is telling him that he wants the son to destroy all his negatives of photos when he dies. There is a passage that resonates with my own feeling about life/death then, and here it is:

This has to do with a view of life and death that's almost impossible to explain in words. It's more of a gut-level feeling that time and I are old partners, that I'm just another rider on the big arrow. My life is worth no more than what I have done with it, and I've always seen the search for immortality as not only futile but ludicrous, just as elaborate coffins are a pathetic attempt to evade the carbon cycle. ....When I die, I'd like the floor swept clean behind me, all traces gone, nothing left. It's just my way....just the way I see things.

This states EXACTLY how I feel about life/death. In fact, so strongly do I feel this...that I won't use my 'real name' for any of my fiction work that's been published. And this feeling also is partly why I chose NEVER to have children. When I die, it is the END, period. I see the futility and wild attempts at assuring 'immortality' as pathetic too....for in a MILLION YEARS from now, who will care? LIVE FOR NOW, for no one is promised tomorrow.