A Mimesis Lesson About Procrastination

When I first came to UCLA a prime mentor was Charlie Seeger, father of all those Seegers, and the senior musicologist/philosopher of the time. He took a particular liking to the Hutchinsons, taught Andy and Scott how to do somersaults by his example, tried to teach me how to stand on my head each morning, and had, to my knowledge, only one failing: procrastination.  Would he finally finish his major book before he was 90?  (I think it turned out to be 92.)
Later I ran into writings by comedian Dick Van Dyke, then turning 80, in which he commented that he had managed to conquer drinking and smoking,  but not procrastination.

Sharing this all too common habit, and with a continuing interest in mimesis, i.e. how we learn from art and literature, I was struck by the meaning  of a recent cartoon in the LA Times: some old coots are reminiscing  about their pasts, where did the time go, when will their time come (end), etc.  The final  section of the cartoon shows three garbage cans standing in an alley, one marked “recycle”, one “trash”, the third “time”, a visual statement perhaps more powerful than endless verbal admonitions!