Posted Friday 23 February 2007

Walking Legacy

San Anselmo, June 24, 2003: Tonight it is so hot I am unable to fall asleep, and in the wee hours encounter a black mood. Before long the mood will pass, but I think about what we leave behind in this world.

My sometime nemesis, Emmett Chapman, in my opinion, hopes to be remembered for the musical instrument he designed, and for the two-handed tapping technique he pioneered. It might be so, for a while. For forty years, or a hundred, perhaps even longer as a paragraph or footnote in music books.

For most of us, our works do not stand much chance of enduring. Perhaps the sculptor of Mount Rushmore. His works endure, but who knows his name? Perhaps the Taj Mahal. The sultan's name can be found in history books, as can the name of the woman he so loved. But even history books will some day fade.

For most of us, we have no works likely to endure the long seasons. For a very few of us, we leave works which might last a few hundred years, maybe. The blink of an eye in our cosmos.

I have no children. Some day I will be a memory, slowly fading, and when that memory has faded, will be gone.

But I think of Adrienne who has grown daughters. I think of my brothers and sisters who have children grown and children yet growing. They leave a walking, talking legacy which might endure for a time.

Any guarantee of eternity? None whatever.

But they have a chance.