…But at my back I always hear
Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Just Possibly a Preamble
Three O’ Clock in the morning is always the deep dark panic hour, a time of bug-eyed terror, mournful sighs and palpitations. A gnashing or at least a chattering of teeth is not unknown. Sometimes I worry about whether the Jesuits were right: perhaps Hell exists in all its horror, in all of its eternally crepuscular fury; perhaps Hieronymus Bosch’s only artistic failure was a lack of imaginative fecundity; perhaps St. Ignatius Loyola was giving a highly expurgated version in his Spiritual Exercises and glossing over the particularly nasty bits. I have so far avoided the temptation to disturb the sleep of the local Roman Catholic priest, but I keep his number to hand just in case. One can imagine the conversation:
Me: It is an emergency father.
Priest: The Last Rites, my son?
Me: No, St. Ignatius’ Book of Spiritual Exercises and – if it's not too much bother – St. John of the Cross’s Dark Night of the Soul.
I omit the unfortunate sleep-befuddled priest’s rejoinder but I imagine that it would be delivered in a heavy Irish accent and would be to the effect that I should go forth and multiply forthwith.
More usually than not, the sweat inducing panic is over things I have omitted to do and that I might never have time to do now. Sins of Omission were always more terrifying than Sins of Commission because there were just so many things you could omit. At 48 and somewhat on the stout side, the SAS is out of the question and I don’t suppose the Americans would be particularly keen to have me in the Special Forces. In fact, given my propensity for improbable accidents, they would probably prefer that I joined the opposition. I grow old, I grow old … will I have time to become a famous novelist, read Dostoyevsky in Russian, walk the entire length of Patagonia or visit Bognor Regis before the Grim Reaper pats me on the shoulder or rather more likely before I inadvertently kick him in the groin?
Am I, as my ever cheery friend Mike suggests, an obsessive compulsive? This is another thought that constantly runs through my mind like a toy train spinning manically round a track to the rhythm of W.H. Auden's "Night Mail". Obsessive compulsive … Obsessive compulsive …. The thought plagues me on a nightly basis and it might well be true; on the other hand, the possibly Iago-like Mike is always applying some label to me. At another time he described me as neurotic. Another train joins the track: obsessive compulsive … obsessive compulsive … neurotic.
This time anxieties centred around post-Socratic Greek philosophy. Do I know enough to justify my existence when I meet my Maker? Might Charon not demand a drachma, sesterces or Euro but instead insist on a deconstuctive analysis of, say, Epicureanism before allowing me onto the ferry? I could face extinction at any moment. Deciding to start at once – that is, at 3.22 AM – with the Stoics, I hurled myself out of bed, picked myself up off the floor & made for the computer, pausing only briefly to apply some Savlon to the carpet burns. A few minutes later, Amazon was in receipt of a fair amount of my cash, and my salvation was on its way in the form of a number of standard texts. But still, there was at least a day to wait and anything might happen.
Quivering wimpishly before my keyboard and rubbing more ointment into my sore knees, it occurred to me that that a good dose of Stoicism might be just what I need.
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