Live fast or live slow? Preparing for Lent

"No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn", sang Jim Morrison. He might have not have wasted his dawn, but he lived not to see his noon. Live fast, die young.

My father lived slow and died old. Is there a rush? Brief, bright candle or long smoulder - how do you choose - is there a choice, or is it just about the cards that are dealt out to you?

Is there even a dichotomy?

The Doors' Texas Radio and the Big Beat came to me late this morning as I wasted my dawn. I woke around seven, then went back to sleep for another hour, got out of bed, opened the roller-blinds to see a pair of swans flying fast and low across the back garden, their white plumage lit vividly by the low morning sun. This sight seemed to justify my decision not to get out of bed at seven.

But by the time I'd had breakfast, exercised, washed, done some shopping it was half past eleven. I had indeed, wasted the dawn. I caught the 12:36 train down to Chynów, rather than the 10:35. Make the most of every hour - there's one less left every hour. And while down on the działka I finished editing three articles that I could have done in the office on Friday but didn't get round to it. Work blurs with leisure, leisure blurs with work, but that's the nature of my job - and I love it dearly.

Why the rush?

Well? Why indeed... Lent starts Wednesday, Ash Wednesday. It's that annual reminder of our mortality - "Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return". A time of mortification of the flesh, a time to contemplate what's been, and what's to come; a time to re-impose rigour upon one's life. Time to consider one's routines, a time to consider what works and what doesn't. A time to anchor one's soul into a time and a place, to winnow the wheat from the chaff in one's existence.

Cancel my subscription to the Resurrection. It's coming up to Ostatki - literally, 'the Lasts' - finishing off the last of the booze and the meat; getting ready to push away all the distractions - getting ready to push open to the doors of perception. The annual six-and-half week break from being on autopilot. Consciousness must take over, on a diet of oatmeal, fruit, vegetables and mineral water. Normal asceticism shall yield to extreme asceticism.

Lent is about body, mind and spirit. And so, this Lent, I shall be launching into a series of blog posts entitled Build your own Religion, another annual spiritual quest, a further milestone along my personal road from Zero to One.

Below: the long way home, via ul. Buszycka.

This time last year
Warsaw growing in the sun

This time two years ago:
Of Consciousness and Will across the universe

This time four years ago:
The Devil is indeed Doubt

This time five years ago:
Are you aware of your consciousness?

This time six years ago:
"Why are all the good historians British?"

This time eight years ago:
Central Warsaw, evening rush-hour

This time nine years ago:
Cold and getting colder

This time 11 years ago:
Uwaga! Sople!

This time 12 years ago:
Ul. Poloneza at its worst