On Life and Memories.

A week ago I watched Peter O’Toole playing King Priam in the film Troy. Tonight I’m watching him play Henry II in The Lion in Winter, a film made thirty six years earlier. Such an illustration of ageing was made shockingly manifest there.

How the substance of the man grows flaccid and the vitality withers. How the eyes lose their power to shoot arrows and now lie impotent in damp and reddened sockets. How the hair becomes fine silk where once was sturdy cotton. How the voice that roared now echoes from a hollow vessel. And how the ticking of the clock of life grows ever more insistent as we wait for it to stop.

Such is the work of the tyrant Time from whose icy touch no one may hope to be exempted. And still we drag the ghosts of beloved but lifeless memories from their resting place and pretend they matter.