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Tidal Wave

Mar12

TIME AND OTHER NONSENSE

The news today came instantly from across the wide world, all the way from the other side of a vast and angry sea. From Japan, over satellite, we saw videos and photos of massive earthquakes and giant tsunamis, as they were happening. Within minutes, even seconds, we Americans bore witness to the fury of Mother Nature unleashed on Japanese soil. It was a shock sent round the world, breaking apart whole villages, slamming into continents, traveling 500 miles an hour or more. Though awed by the destructive power of an earth gone mad, we’re impressed but not awed by the immediacy of our news links.

How different the world was in 1968; an eternity away from 1584 when Sir Walter Raleigh sailed the high seas and named the new colony Virginia for his virgin queen. In PERSEPHONE IN HELL, teenage Glory experiences the world more like Queen Elizabeth I than like any modern girl today.

“There are idiots and savages all around. And no one to defend me from them. It was no wonder Queen Elizabeth sent scouts to the new world while she herself stayed home. It’s boring being safe, but probably, better than being abused. I thought idiot jerks were only in my backwater town, but in fact, they’re everywhere. Even a queen has to wait, sometimes for years, for news from across the sea. Savages are everywhere. And the new world I’m longing for is oceans away.

Someday, I’ll be free to go wherever I want, whenever I want. It will be a new world, and no dumb creeps will stop me from getting there. She took some small comfort in her thoughts.”

For Glory, there is no immediate news, no quick cure, nothing to do but hold on tight. Accept the disasters and difficulties of her life. Wait for events to unfold.

Sometimes it hits me like a shock wave, how fundamentally altered from 1968 our lives are today. It’s almost an eternity, a sea of time away.

 

 

 

Time Stands Still

Feb11

TIME AND OTHER NONSENSE

When I was a teenager, I could count on a few things. One, my life was boring and relentlessly so. Two, there was absolutely nothing of any entertainment value happening in my old home town. And three, time had a way of taking so long to pass that it seemed virtually to stand still.

I disliked high school very much. Okay, that’s four. Along with the going to school (already remarked upon at length), there was the reality of the school day itself. Whether the subject was biology or algebra, Spanish or civics, I’d look at the clock in my classroom – 10:20. A half hour later, I’d look again – 10:23. And again when I was sure the bell had to sound any second – 10:23. Even my disturbingly handsome trigonometry teacher, Mr. S___, couldn’t persuade me to keep my eyes off the clock. You know the old saying about the pot that never boils? Watching that clock like I did, dragged out a perfectly standard school day into a universe of time.

And so it is for my character Glory in PERSEPHONE IN HELL. In this scene, she’s in history class, watching a spider up on the ceiling when she should have been listening to the teacher.

“Miss M____, are you still with us?” sneered Mrs. Hansen. “Can you tell me which monarch, which king was next in succession?” A trick question for sure.

Glory looked squarely at the teacher with her piercing violet eyes and replied in her straightforward way, as though she had been listening all along. “The great queen, Elizabeth the First, of course.” The class burst out laughing – Glory was so good at showing up the teacher. Mrs. Hansen turned red, furiously scribbled out a pink detention note, and slapped it on Gloria’s desk.

Glory looked up and saw the daddy long legs gone, escaped from the classroom. The spider at least, is free. She hoped with all the fierceness of her spirit that it was female.”

Now you might be thinking by this now that Glory is really me in disguise. But the truth is, I never got detention. Maybe once. Spiders freak me out. And I always paid attention in class. That’s the truth, for the most part.

Ask Not

Jan25

TIME AND OTHER NONSENSE

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January 20th is Inauguration Day, the day an elected U.S. president is sworn into duty. This year was the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address. I don’t remember this speech, considering I was eight years old when he delivered it. I do recall very well the day he was assassinated. I was ten years old by that time and more cognizant of the world. I remember my teacher crying as the principal of the school announced over the loudspeaker that the president had been shot. I walked home after school as always, and saw my older sister crying as she caught up with me on the sidewalk. I remember saying, ‘we didn’t even know him, why are you crying?’ and her reply ‘you are too young to understand.’

It was clearly the end of an era, the end of Camelot, the end of innocence for an entire generation. JFK wasn’t a perfect president. In fact, with the Cuban missile crisis, we almost went to war. But his most important words live on, and instruct us well if we care to listen and learn. “Ask not what your country can do for you,” he said. “Ask what you can do for your country.” Our new era of individual liberties, self obsessions, and demands for instant gratification overshadow any sense that the common good should even be considered. His words sound almost quaint in today’s context.

But there was a time when individuals put aside their parochial concerns and turned their minds to greater ideals. This passage from my novel PERSEPHONE IN HELL brings back Glory’s memories of the moon landing.

“…it was the event of a lifetime, of a hundred thousand lifetimes. It was July 20th in the year 1969 – the first time ever in the history of humankind that a man would walk on the moon.

The Apollo 11 lunar module. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins. They were the talk of every conversation, the images behind every thought, everybody’s greatest heroes. The Eagle has landed, Armstrong said. That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. A human footprint on the surface of the moon, an inconceivable fete. Of course no one could think of anything else.

Perhaps it was the end of an era, the end of time as we know it, of a time when people had limits and old ways and weights placed on them so they could barely move forward. So even the brightest and best could only inch ahead.

Or maybe it was the beginning of time, a time of anti gravity, of breaking free from the old constraints, of leaping lightness, of acceptance and tolerance for new ideas.”

Though I was only a child when President Kennedy lived, I remember the pride and passion that he inspired people to feel for their country. Not in a bullying ‘we are the greatest’ way. Not in a phony ‘love it or leave it’ way. But with respect and pride for the incredible accomplishments of the day, and hope for a better future. That is the legacy that President Kennedy left us. That is the part about him that I will always remember.