All the World’s a Stage

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, OCF, photog's Corner, Reclaiming the Family ,

The Bible (Psalms 90:10) says, “The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.”

So, seventy years are a little less than 25,000 days.  That seems like a big number.  But at the end looking back, it’s the blink of an eye.  That time is swallowed up in sleeping and commuting to work and drinking bad coffee and keeping your boss from firing you and fighting with vendors and trying to satisfy clients and paying the bills.  Hopefully you spent enough time with your wife and kids so that they had some inkling of who you really are.

The best days are carrying the babies home from a family party where everyone was glad to see each other and there was something to celebrate; a holiday or an occasion.  Or taking the kids to the seashore for a week or two in the heat of July.  Or maybe taking your wife out someplace special for a big anniversary.

And then the kids get married and then the grandchildren come along.  So, there’s a progression.  The cycle comes around again.  Only now you’re on the other side of the wheel.  Way out there on the far side.  You recognize the program but now you’re seeing it from far away.

So, the thing to do is try to make yourself useful and try to add a little something to the plot of the story.  You’re no longer the lead.  You’re not even near the center of the stage.  You’re kind of the guy in the wings with a copy of the script ready to whisper the lines to the actors if they forget their lines.  Well, it’s still useful and who knows maybe there’s a non-speaking role for you as a spear carrier.  That’s when you get to be backup driver for soccer games or band practice.  After all it’s honorable service.

But it is weird how life works.  You really can’t delay gratification.  You can’t work for forty years to make enough money to make the last years worth having missed what came before.  You have to figure out how to squeeze the joy out of the process of living.  You have to enjoy being a kid and a young man and your prime and what comes after that.  You have to find some friends along the way, go on those coffee walks at break time and go to your kids’ soccer games and their kids’ baseball games and volunteer around town and even do really annoying stuff like getting involved in local politics.

Like I said, it’s the blink of an eye.  Twenty-five or thirty thousand days is a short span when so much is eaten up by routine that is almost unavoidable.  I guess if you’re a billionaire it’s a little different but I’ll bet it’s still the same tradeoffs, responsibilities versus joy.

Of course I haven’t seen the last page.  As Shakespeare said,

“Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion,

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”

Well, I better hurry up and get my ducks in a row.

Rufus Panhandles a Meal

photog Current Events, Life in Dunwich, OCF, Photo Study, photog's Corner , , ,

A funny thing happened yesterday.  I was heading out to take some photos of a patch of bugle weed that is in bloom.  I had my camera backpack on and I was carrying a small tabletop sized tripod.  And as I walked out on the deck in front of the kitchen a baby fox came walking past me on the upper driveway.  When I closed the door, he noticed me and stopped and turned.  What a strange moment.  Now Camera Girl loves to see the baby foxes when they’re denning in the swamp so I wanted to get a photo for her so I desperately tried to get my camera out of the pack and in hand but the little fox trotted toward the shed and disappeared before I could free the camera.  I followed him behind the shed and looked down into the woods and pond but he was gone.

Camera Girl was out shopping.  When she got home, I told her about it and she was very excited.  She always enjoys when any foxes show up on the property but especially when pups (kits?) are around.  So, she was thrilled when a little while later it returned on the driveway.  And she went and got a bunch of chicken scraps and started feeding it.  I told her to be careful and keep her distance.  A fox walking around in the open in the daytime is a questionable occurrence.  They say that rabid animals tend to show up during the day so I cautioned her.  Well, before you know it, she’d fed the creature and then she put out a small bowl of milk and at that point I’m afraid maybe it’s moving in with us.

I went out with my camera and saw him ducking in and out of a space under the shed.  I got a few not-so-great photos and watched him for a while.  He was young and he didn’t look that strong.  I tried to imagine how a kit that young would be on its own.  I wondered if the den was under the shed but I never saw any sign of the parents or den-mates.  Could his parents have been killed?  It didn’t seem likely.  Was he sickly and abandoned?  Maybe.  After a while he didn’t reappear so I went in.  Camera Girl left out more food and milk.  But by nightfall it was still there.

Last night I heard about how exciting it was that the little fox was about.  I warned her that it wasn’t so good having it around.  I told her it was a health hazard for the dogs to have a wild canid around spreading various diseases they could catch.  She yes-yessed me but I could tell she was hoping it would stick around.  I was preparing myself for the headaches this new “pet” would cause me.  Oh well.

But today Rufus was nowhere to be found.  Even a fresh portion of food and milk wasn’t enough to lure him back.  Is he gone for good?  Maybe.  Camera Girl is disappointed but I can tell she still has hopes.

To be continued.

Tempus Fugit – Part 5

photog Literature, My Fiction, photog's Corner, Science Fiction / Fantasy ,

“I said, That’s impossible.  That world has been dead forever.  You must be mistaken.”  Bertram McKenzie shook his head and I could see there were tears in his eyes, “No the stars don’t lie.  We are one thousand years in the future and that is Earth or what’s left of it.  And the rest of the solar system has also been impacted.  Mercury is completely gone.  Venus is worse than Earth and even Mars has lost its atmosphere completely.  The only thing I can think of is that a massive disruption of the Sun’s fusion process occurred in the last thousand years; something like a nova.  And the Earth as we knew it was destroyed utterly.”  I asked him exactly when did it happen and he said, “Without searching for the event it’s impossible to know.  It could have happened just a few years after our present day in the twenty first century or it could have been almost a thousand years in the future, right before when we are now.”

And then I asked him the question I had been thinking about most, “Bertram did we cause this?”  And he shook his head violently, “No!  No, no, no.  I didn’t do this.  This is just a coincidence.  How could the tiny energy I used to transport us cause this stellar event.  It’s not possible!”  But I was pretty sure there was fear in his voice and panic.

I was as frightened and panicked as McKenzie but I could see we had to get back to our time as quickly as possible and try to get ourselves re-grounded with reality.  I told him, “Alright none of this is anything we can act on here and now.  Let’s go home.”

The boys did some calculations and set up the drive within a few minutes and we made another run.  This time it was our Earth.  Alive and blue and beautiful.  I think there must have been tears in everyone’s eyes.  We were back about the time we left the LHS 1140 system to come back to Earth.  We had decided that two sets of “us” in the same time period even fifty light years apart might be asking for trouble.  We brought the craft in for a landing and I sent everyone home for the day.  And I went home that night and got pretty thoroughly drunk.

The next morning, I tried to think of who I should tell this awful thing to.  In a 1950s science fiction movie there would be a convenient convention of physicists with someone resembling Albert Einstein to break the news to.  All we had was tech billionaires and all they would be interested in was how to short the market at the perfect moment.

So instead, I decided to tell the President of the United States and let him figure out how to let the world know they were doomed.  Or maybe not let them know.  After all, maybe we should have some smart men think about this for a few days and then break the news in a way that won’t stampede civilization off a cliff any sooner than it already was.

I got on the phone to the White House and I set up an appointment with the President and his science advisor.  And I got a few of the wise men from the voyage to put together a dog and pony show to give some proof to my story.  It wasn’t a normal experience.  I don’t think either man actually believed me.  But the President told me not to breath a word of this to the press or anyone else until the NSA had a chance to think up a way to break it to the public.

On the flight back to Texas I got a text from McKenzie.  He said he needed to talk to me so I told him to meet me at my home at midnight.  He was there when I arrived and he looked like hell.  He said, “I think we did spark the nova.  When we caused the surge in the field that threw us back into the distant past it must have disrupted the time-space environment of the solar system and triggered the solar activity that destroyed Earth.”  I said, “Well, it’s too late to do anything about that now.  What we have to do is figure out how to save humanity from this disaster.  And I don’t think it’s a good idea to be taking the blame for all of this.  That’s probably the fastest way to commit suicide I can think of.”

But he shook his head and said, “But there is a way to fix this.  We take the ship and travel through both time and space and meet up with our ship while it’s in the LHS 1140 system and tell them how to adjust their program to avoid the surge.  Then the disruption will be prevented and everything will be back to normal.”

I think I looked at him as if he had three heads and said, “Do you know how insane that sounds?  How can we change the past?”  But he just shook his head and said, “It’s the only way!”

I told him to take the week off and we’d talk about this crazy idea when we’d both had a chance to get some rest.  I went to bed and when I got up in the morning there was a message from the field saying that McKenzie had refueled the ship and taken off.  At about the same time there was a message from Bertram it read, “Devon, I performed the mission.  Meeting myself was a frightening but interesting experience.  I convinced them to change the program and afterward I took a time trip, about fifty million years into the future and the big beautiful blue earth was still there.  So, all’s right with the world.

But I realized that this technology is much too dangerous for humans to fool around with.  So, I’m not coming back and I’ve taken all the key documents you would need to duplicate my invention.  I’m going home.  Goodbye.

Bertram McKenzie”

And that’s almost the end of the story.  He never came back.  But he said he was going home.  So, I had a contractor do a metal detector search of the area where the McKenzie family has lived in Maine for the last two hundred years and sure enough, they found a lot of those precious metals buried out in a field in Maine.  There was a rock with an inscription carved into it, “HEY DEVON.  THERE’S NO PLACE LIKE HOME.””

At that point Devon stopped talking and just stared out at the wall behind me.  I said, “Well, it sounds like it all worked out for the best.”  His eyes snapped back on my face and he said, “Sure, sure.  You’re right, everything’s great.  I guess I’m just tired.”

But as I sat there, I thought of something, “Devon, if McKenzie met up with his earlier self and yours in the LHS-1140 system and they came back on time where are they now?”  He looked at me and nodded his head, “That’s what I’ve been thinking about.  I think the program fix he gave them destroyed their ship inside that system.  We’ll probably never know but I kind of think in some sense I may be a ghost.”

He was preoccupied so I said my farewells and left.  I’m not sure I believe the story, but I think he does.  I think I feel sorry for the richest man in the world.