cellular division , imperfect with aging but functional , can not go on indefinitely ; and whether ultimately it be death by cancer , a continuum unto old age , with the desiccated , shriveled leaf at last torn from the branch at the slightest wind , or termination at my own hand , it could hardly matter much to impartial others , alterity , and within the vantage of time that makes all things miniscule and insignificant ( a major war among australopithecus that is so completely effaced from memory as to never have happened , caesar augustus having become a vacuous name and abstraction even in the days of aurelius,117or the petty aspects of my personal domain in early and later family all too fleeting ) .