Quoting Things sort of related to expiration

Melville:

“Look ye, Starbuck, all visible objects are but as pasteboard masks. Some inscrutable yet reasoning thing puts forth the molding of their features. The white whale tasks me; he heaps me. Yet he is but a mask. 'Tis the thing behind the mask I chiefly hate; the malignant thing that has plagued mankind since time began; the thing that maws and mutilates our race, not killing us outright but letting us live on, with half a heart and half a lung.”

Fitzgerald:

“Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgiastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther.... And one fine morning —
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

Keats:

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,
…….
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal--yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
Forever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
……..
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty'--that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

And now Steven Millhauser short story about that very thing

He’s nine going on ten, skinny-tall, shoulder blades pushing out like things inside a paper bag, new blue bathing suit too tight here, too loose there, but what’s all that got to do with anything? What’s important is that he’s here, standing by the picnic table, the sun shining on the river, the smell of pine needles and river water sharp in the air, somewhere a shout, laughter, music from a radio. His father’s cleaning ashes out of the grill, his mother and sister are laying down blankets on the sunny grass not far from the table, Grandma’s carrying one of the aluminum folding chairs toward the high pine near the edge of the drop to the river, and he’s doing what he likes to do best, what he’s really good at: standing around doing nothing. Everyone’s forgotten about him for a few seconds, the way it happens sometimes. You try not to remind anybody you’re there. He loves this place. On the table’s the fat thermos jug with the white spout near the bottom. After his swim he’ll push the button on the spout and fill up a paper cup with pink lemonade. It’s a good sound: fsshh, psshh. In the picnic basket he can see two packages of hot dogs, jars of relish and mustard, some bun ends showing, a box of Oreo cookies, a bag of marshmallows which are marshmellows so why the “a,” paper plates sticking up sideways, a brown folded-over paper bag of maybe cherries. All week long he’s looked forward to this day. Nothing’s better than setting off on an all-day outing, in summer, to the park by the river—the familiar houses and vacant lots no longer sitting there with nothing to do but drifting toward you through the car window, the heat of the sun-warmed seat burning you through your jeans, the bottoms of your feet already feeling the pebbly ground pushing up on them as you walk from the parking lot to the picnic grounds above the riverbank. But now he’s here, right here, his jeans tossed in the back seat of the car and his T-shirt stuffed into his mother’s straw bag, the sun on one edge of the table and the piney shade covering the rest of it, Grandma already setting up the chair. And so the day’s about to get going at last, the day he’s been looking forward to in the hot nights while watching bars of light slide across his wall from passing cars, he’s here, he’s arrived, he’s ready to begin.

Though who’s to say when anything begins really? You could say the day began when they passed the wooden sign with the words “INDIAN COVE” and the outline of a tomahawk, on a curve of road with a double yellow line down the middle and brown wooden posts with red reflectors. Or maybe it all started when the car backed up the slope of the driveway and the tires bumped over the sidewalk between the knee-high pricker hedges. Or what if it happened before that, when he woke up in the morning and saw the day stretching out before him like a whole summer of blue afternoons? But he’s only playing, just fooling around, because he knows exactly when it all begins: it begins when he enters the water. That’s the agreement he’s made with himself, summer after summer. That’s just how it is. The day begins in the river, and everything else leads up to it.

Not that he’s all that eager to rush into things. Now that he’s here, now that the waiting’s practically over, he enjoys prolonging the excitement of moving toward the moment he’s been waiting for. It isn’t the swimming itself he looks forward to. He doesn’t even swim. He hangs on to the inner tube and kicks his legs. He likes it, it’s fine, he can take it or leave it. No, what he cares about, what thrills him every time, is knowing that this is it, the beginning of the long-awaited day at the river, as agreed to by himself in advance. Everything’s been leading up to it and, in the way of things that lead up to other things, there’s an electric charge, a hum. He can feel it all over his body. The closer you get, the more it’s there.

Julia, thirteen, isn’t like him in that way. Soon as she’s finished laying out the three blankets, she’ll run over to the edge of the drop, scamper down, and cross the short stretch of ground to the river. She’s always been like that, throwing herself into things—piano lessons, blueberrying, hiking a trail, the bumper cars at Pleasure Beach. She thinks he’s cautious, too held back, timid even, and it’s probably true, but it’s also something else: he likes things to build up slowly, because when it happens that way everything feels important. Does this mean there’s something un-grown-up about him, something that’ll go away one day, like his stick-out shoulder blades and his knobby anklebones?

“Come on, give us a hand, Cap’n,” Julia says. He’s not invisible anymore. Julia doesn’t like people standing around doing nothing. He takes a blanket corner and before he knows it she’s off around the table toward the pine where Grandma’s sitting, she’s scrambling down the drop and out of sight. A second later her head appears, then she’s all there except for her feet, then she’s got heels, toes. She doesn’t stop, goes right in past her knees, bends to splash water on her arms. He can see the reflections of her red suit broken up in the water. The river has little ripply waves, maybe from a speedboat out beyond the white barrels. His father once told him the Housatonic’s a tidal river. He remembers the word: tidal. Could that be the tide he’s looking at, those ripples? The Housatonic. He likes saying it, likes leaning into that “oooo” sound, which reminds him of a train coming around a bend at night in an old movie. Julia throws herself in, begins swimming out to the barrels.
“You run along now, Jimmy,” his mother says. “I’ll be fine here.” He knows it’s time to get started, you can’t delay things forever. He goes over to the sunny inner tubes, lifts up the one lying on a slant against the other, squeezes the warm dusty rubber to make sure it’s tight. Then he begins rolling it bumpily over the grass around the end of the picnic table toward the pine where Grandma’s sitting.

It’s a short walk, in deep shade broken by spots of sun. He’s stepping on soft-crackly pine needles and spongy pinecones, which press up into the soles of his feet as though he’s walking on rolled-up-sock balls. The earth feels bouncy and hard at the same time. Grandma’s sitting next to a high pine that’s leaning a little forward, as if one day it started to fall then changed its mind. To the left there’s another pine, also leaning forward, and the two trunks form a kind of frame around the sunny river and the wooded hills on the far side. Everything’s alive with interest: that big pinecone in dark shade with one end glowing in sunlight, that cherry-stained Popsicle stick lying next to a bumpy root. Grandma’s chair isn’t the heavy long one from the porch, with adjustable positions, no, she’s got the small one with a straight back that unfolds with one easy pull. She’s wearing her dark-blue bathing suit and a pair of straw sandals, toenails polish-pink, her thick hair a strange sort of whitish yellowish orange. She’s always laughing about her trouble with hair dyes. She’s sitting in the shade near the edge of the drop, legs in sunlight, book in her lap. Her fingers are bent at the knuckles. She likes holding them up and showing them to him. See: arthritis. The crisscross strips in the chair are white and lime green. As he comes up to her, she turns her head, places a hand in her open book to keep it from closing.

“So, my good man, you’re going in? Look at Julia out there.” He brings this out in people, who knows why: Cap’n, my good man. It’s something about him. His sister’s by the barrels now, swimming on her back, kicking her feet, sweeping up both arms. “That’s right, my good woman,” he says, and Grandma does what he wants her to do, gives a deep-down scratchy laugh, a laugh with approval in it. It’s a witty family, you have to be on your toes. If he gets up late in the morning his father says things like “Out drinking again last night, eh, Jim?” or “Behold, the son is risen.” Standing beside Grandma, balancing his inner tube with his fingertips, he takes it all in: the two bracelets on Grandma’s wrist, one turquoise and one silver, her fingers puffy, her knuckles bumpy, the clumps of hot-looking droopy grass on the few feet of ground that go past the chair to the edge of the drop, the thick pine root twisting out of the slope. A piece of white string hangs over the root. These are good things to look at, but sometimes you don’t see them. You see them when they’re leading up to something.

He takes a few steps to the edge of the drop, the edge of the world. Behind him’s Grandma in her chair, the floor of pine needles, the picnic table. Behind that, the sunny blankets, a field—but why stop there? Connecticut’s stretching away at his back, the monkey cage in the Beardsley Park Zoo, the Merritt Parkway with its stone bridges, then comes Grandma’s apartment on West 110th Street, and, if you keep going, the Mississippi River, Pikes Peak, California. This is fun. You can do it in both directions. In front of him the slope, the sandy-earthy place at the river’s edge, Julia on her back. Then the white barrels, the wooded hills on the far bank of the river, and beyond the hills the other side of Connecticut, the trip to the whaling ship at Mystic Seaport, somewhere out there Cape Cod, the Atlantic Ocean, Africa. He likes standing here, thinking these things. He likes the picture of himself in his own mind as he stares out sternly over the river, frowning in sunlight, his fingertips resting on top of the inner tube, his other hand on his hip, Huck Finn on the shore of the Mississippi, an Indian brave with a quiver of arrows on his back, getting ready to go down to the canoes.

But he can’t stand there all day. Julia’s looking at him from where she’s resting against a barrel. She’s shading her eyes with one hand and waving him on with the other. Come on, Cap’n! Grandma’s looking up from her book to watch him. And, besides, he wants the day at Indian Cove to begin, he really does, even if all he’s been trying to do since he got here is hold it back for as long as possible. There’re two ways down to the river: the hard dirt path on the other side of the pine, where the grownups go, or straight down the soft, crumbly slope. Gripping the inner tube under his arm, he steps over the edge and half slides half stumbles down, feeling the warm sandy earth spilling over the tops of his feet. It reminds him of salt sprinkled into his hand. He’s there; he’s made it; he’s standing on the patch of orangey sandy dirt that’s too small to be a beach. The beach they go to has real sand, lots of it, with blankets and beach umbrellas, salt water, a refreshment stand, seagulls, dead crabs, sandbars, waves. This is the shore of the river, and it’s different in different places: here the sandy orange earth, farther down some boulders and cattails, elsewhere trees and grass right at the water’s edge. This no-name place is gentler than a beach, more quiet, more shut away, with the slope behind him, the green-brown water in front of him, the white barrels moving up and down a little, as if the water’s breathing.

He starts forward, rolling his inner tube. Nine or ten steps and he’ll be at the water’s edge. He can see ripples there, like very small waves: a tidal river. If he didn’t know it was a river, he’d think he was standing by a lake. Tree branches bending down to the water hide the turn of the river on both sides, and what you see is a lake with wooded hills, a few little houses on the far shore, a pier with a tiny man fishing. He rolls his tube over the warm sand-dirt. There’re pebbles here, but no rubbery piles of seaweed, no purple-black mussel shells. A green Coke bottle, empty, stands upright and looks out of place. It belongs on the beach, tilted in the sand next to a blanket. It’s got a green shadow. Blurred footprints, a smooth flat stone good for skimming. The excitement’s building; he’s almost there.

At the water’s edge he stops. He makes sure the little waves pull back before they can touch his toes. Through the water he can see ripply sun-designs on the river bottom. They look like a chain-link fence made of light. The river is it, the beginning of his adventure, and here at the final place he stops for the last time.

Everything has led up to this moment. No, wrong, he isn’t there yet. The moment’s just ahead of him. This is the time before the waiting stops and he crosses over into what he’s been waiting for. He inhales the river smell, takes it deep into his nostrils. He’s been moving toward the moment that’s about to happen ever since he woke up this morning, ever since last week, when his father came home from work and with his briefcase still in his hand said they’d be going to Indian Cove on Saturday if the weather held. Every day he could feel it coming closer. It was like waiting for the trip to the amusement park, like waiting for the circus tents to rise out of the fields the next town over. In another second the waiting will end. The day will officially begin. It’s what he’s been hoping for, but here at the edge of the river he doesn’t want to let the waiting go. He wants to hang on with all his might. He’s standing on the shore of the river, the brown-green ripples are breaking at his toes. The sun is shining, Julia’s waving him on, the white barrels are rising and falling gently, and what he wants is to go back to the wooden sign with the tomahawk and start waiting for the shore of the river.

What’s wrong with him? Why can’t he be like Julia? He loves this day, doesn’t he? Any second now he’ll be standing in the water up to his knees, swishing his hands around. He’ll go in up to his bathing suit. He’ll wet his chest and shoulders, hop on the tube and paddle out to Julia. He’ll laugh in the sun. Later he’ll throw himself on his blanket, feel the sun drying out his wet suit. He’ll eat a hot dog in a bun, drink pink lemonade from the jug. He’ll be sluggish with sun and happiness. At the end of the day he’ll change out of his suit in the creaking wooden bathhouse, he’ll fall asleep in the car on the way home, under the street lights. But now, as he stands at the end of waiting, something is wrong. He’s shaken deep down, as though he’ll lose something if the day begins. If he goes into the river he’ll lose the excitement, the feeling that everything matters because he’s getting closer and closer to the moment he’s been waiting for. When you have that feeling, everything’s full of life, every leaf, every pebble. But when you begin you’re using things up. The day starts slipping away behind you. He wants to stay on this side of things, to hold it right here. A nervousness comes over him, a chilliness in the sun. In a moment the day will begin to end. Things will rush away behind him. The day he’s been waiting for is practically over. He sees it now, he sees it: ending is everywhere. It’s right there in the beginning. They don’t tell you about it. It’s hidden away in things. Under the shining skin of the world, everything’s dead and gone. The sun is setting. The day is dying. Grandma’s lying in her coffin. Her crooked hands are crossed on her chest. His pretty mother’s growing old. Her fingers are thick and bent. Her brown hair is stringy white. No one can stop it. Julia’s dying, his father’s dying, the Coke bottle’s crumbling away to green dust. Everything’s nothing. If he stands still, if he doesn’t move a muscle, maybe he can keep it from happening. Things will stop and no one will ever die. His body’s shaking, he can’t breathe, here at the water’s edge he’s at the end of everything. You can’t live unless there’s a way to hold on to things. He can’t go back because he’s already used it up, he can’t go forward because then it all begins to end, he’s stuck in this place where nothing means anything, it’s streaming in on him like a darkness, like a sickness, he’s seen something he isn’t supposed to see, only grownups are allowed to see it, it’s making him old, it’s ruining everything, his temples are pounding, his eyes are pounding, he feels a scream rising in his chest, he’s going to fall down onto the sandy orange earth, “Ahoy, matey!” shouts Julia, and with a wild cry that tears through his throat he steps over the line and begins his day. ♦