Ah! Realize Your Youth While You Have It!

These widgets are a marvy thing. I've had a load of fun with them today, though very few actually do anything I require or desire, if truth is told. I do like the i-Tunes device which searches for the album covers to display. Many of my recordings in i-Tunes are from my CD collection and not purchased from the on-line store. This device allows me to recover these previously unavailable artworks for my viewing pleasure. C'est bon!

Oscar Wilde was a devotee of Antinous in his time, as well as Hyacinthe, and his poem the 'Sphynx' speaks of the boy made God. However, the 'spirit' of Antinous is better served in his 'The Story of Dorian Gray', the novel of the trajedy of seeking only the superficial in life. His moment of truth arrives as he views the portrait and realizes he shall indeed, one day, grow old. All this after Lord Henry pushes home the point with this little speech:

""Some day, when you are old and wrinkled and ugly, when thought has seared your forehead with its lines, and passion branded your lips with its hideous fires, you will feel it, you will feel it terribly. Now, wherever you go, you charm the world. Will it always be so? . . . You have a wonderfully beautiful face, Mr. Gray. Don't frown. You have. And beauty is a form of genius-- is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. It is of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or spring-time, or the reflection in dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned. It has its divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it. You smile? Ah! when you have lost it you won't smile. . . . People say sometimes that beauty is only superficial. That may be so, but at least it is not so superficial as thought is. To me, beauty is the wonder of wonders. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible. . . . Yes, Mr. Gray, the gods have been good to you. But what the gods give they quickly take away. You have only a few years in which to live really, perfectly, and fully. When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for you, or have to content yourself with those mean triumphs that the memory of your past will make more bitter than defeats. Every month as it wanes brings you nearer to something dreadful. Time is jealous of you, and wars against your lilies and your roses. You will become sallow, and hollow-cheeked, and dull- eyed. You will suffer horribly.... Ah! realize your youth while you have it.""

I have lived with my dearest one and the quest for youth in medicine and diet and exercise are well known to us both, but none shall save us in the end. They merely extend the last flickering benfeits of the white hot coals before they expire and we are no more of this world.