Creed of Core: Between Nothing and Forever

Even as a kid it was a question of Death, or action, motion, speed. On the swing-set, flying high, like later, running. Swinging for life, more life, another century of life.

I sang:
“I’m gonna live to be a-hundred-and-seven-years-old!
I’m gonna live be a-hundred-and-seven-years-old!
I’m gonna live to be a-hundred-and-seven-years-old!”

But why would a seven-year-old be so terrorized, obsessed to the point of ritualistic thinking?

I was the youngest at the picnic, seven years closer to Nothing than the adult picnickers, all in their twenties and thirties, too far from Beginning-from-Nothing to remember, and even further – most believed – from Forever-After to be awed by the Nothing eternally to come.

I chimed my ditty (prayer?), swinging rhythmically with metronome precision, fifty forward, fifty back:

“I’m going to be a-hundred-and-seven-years-old!
I’m going to be a-hundred-and-seven-years-old!
I’m going to be a-hundred-and-seven-years-old!”

Pendulous. Hypnotic. Doomed.