The Big Lebowski “THE DUDE ABIDES,” my sampler says, the counted cross-stitch a student turned colleague counted and stitched for me in red Rockwell font bordered in bowling balls and pins. A simple thing itself, it connects with something more complex: It really ties a world together. In a previous life, this body sitting here weaving these words together, taught students: it really tied a room together. But what abides? Something lodged in memory? An idol to a time that never was? What abides cannot be named, pierced with a needle, suspended over a label. It must just abide, float in time, rest in place. What abides is what is left after what can be used has been. Abiding is being, without effort, man.