Page 210 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Old age and the future

wife, and a comfort to me. A dumb stone, a dead piece of wood,
cannot give succor, but when I express myself in those creations I
feel like they sympathize with me. When I put my hand on the
smooth head of one of those carvings, a feeling goes right through
my palm, as if it had been a real person.
Some are born to leisure and pleasure, others to toil for a living; in
time it becomes their nature that they cannot exist without being in
motion, either with feet or hands. It seems that I am one of the latter
kind. For the last few months I have been sculpting a marble female
head and carving a few pieces of wood; I was so occupied and my
mind so absorbed that I did not have time to think about myself or
take care of the household. To some extent it is conducive to health
and happiness: when I touch the smoothness and see the expression
on the piece, it is like the pleasure when one hears music.
Now that I have finished the marble and wood carvings, and have
looked at them for a few days, my desire has been satiated, and I am
at a loss now. I have no materials and no plans, and do not know
what to do with myself. When I work, handling materials and tools,
then I feel I am existing; idling makes me feel I am in a vacuum,
floating in emptiness. I write this for the sake of keeping my hand
busy and distracting my eye from the hands of the clock, which move
so slowly. It is pessimistic to sacrifice oneself to time. How foolish
when we work to wish time would go faster; then to go home and
wish time to go slower! Cruel time respects nobody, good or evil. It
swallows everything. Even a few hours of life are worth a million
years of nothingness. Ah, how precious are these few minutes of life
that we go through. Omar Khayyam had the words to express this.

July 7, 1958: Sunday has always been my busiest day at home, with
work in the house and garden or on the car, even when my wife was
alive. Had there been an extra day added to the week I would still be
short one day. Now that I am alone in the house, weaker with age
and ailments, still I am driven by an unknown force to work
continuously Saturdays and Sundays without any rest or relaxation. In
thirty-seven years, ever since I went into the fruit trucking business, I
have only relaxed twice, when I took sick and was compelled to go to
the desert for my health. The first time, about twenty years ago, I was
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