The mind of the writer does indeed do something before it dies, and so does its owner, but I would be hard put to call it living.
The painter... does not fit the paints to the world. He most certainly does not fit the world to himself. He fits himself to the paint. The self is the servant who bears the paintbox and its inherited contents.
For writing a first draft requires from the writer a peculiar internal state which ordinary life does not induce. ... how to set yourself spinning?
Does anything eat flowers. I couldn't recall having seen anything eat a flower - are they nature's privileged pets?
Doing something does not require discipline. It creates its own discipline - with a little help from caffeine.
No, the point is not only does time fly and do we die, but that in these reckless conditions we live at all, and are vouchsafed, for the duration of certain inexplicable moments, to know it.