(On being) mortal
Fri, 29 Sep 2023 19:06:04 -0400

It's nearly my favourite time of the year again, when most things
green start giving way to yellow, orange, and red.  I love autumn.

It's not quite here yet, though.  The temperature hovers mostly
around 20C in the daytime, with a couple of near-record 27C days
forecast for the days ahead.  Yay global ~warming~ boiling.

It's been one of those weeks.  One of those where it feels like
just about everything that can go wrong does actually go wrong.
A hellish week that's left me emotionally exhausted and entirely
devoid of energy.  I was set to travel to Switzerland this week to
attend the GNU 40th anniversary celebration[1] in the Biel/Bienne
Volkshaus, but unfortunately had to cancel the trip at the last
minute because of a family emergency.  I also learned that a dear
friend has been diagnosed with cancer - though he told me he can
probably live many years with it, which I hope with all my heart
will be the case.  Fuck cancer.

Earlier this week I was chatting with another good friend, and
at some point we ended up discussing aging, and some of the ways
our bodies react to the passing of time and start to fail as we
get old.

Before that, in early September, I wrote a short eulogy/tribute
to announce the death of a community member I look up to and
whose work I admire to other members of our community, and to
remember him and his legacy.  These all brought our mortality
into clear focus for me.  Not that I was ever really ignorant
of it, but I probably hadn't thought as much about it at any
given time as I have these recent weeks.

I love autumn.  Besides its mesmerizing beauty, for me it's also
a clear reminder of the ephemeral and finite nature of our mortal
lives and existence.  How lucky are those who get to leave this
world better than how they inherited it.

Take care, and so long for now.

  Typed out on an old ThinkPad X200s while listening to
  Mammy Blue[2] and Wayfaring Stranger[3], among others.

  Dedicated to the memory of Thien-Thi Nguyen.
   https://www.gnu.org/people/people.html#ttn

[1] https://www.gnu.org/gnu40/
    Slides and speaker notes for my [would've been] talk:
    https://kelar.org/~bandali/talks/gnu40-infra.html
    gopher://kelar.org/0/~bandali/talks/gnu40-infra.txt
[2] https://yewtu.be/watch?v=HKp9e1_YsWk
[3] https://yewtu.be/watch?v=pB4SYEmwBn8