It's About Time Alanna

In the beginning there was the Sun by day, but it really got kick-started back when people looked at The Milky Way in the night sky. It could be seen everywhere like it can still be on remote mountain tops and in the middle of the oceans. The moon and the planets waltzed around the constant star of the north… Polaris… like the dial of a clock steady as the sun with the setting and the rising and rising and setting.

We might’ve been the first to tell time. The tides told the crabs when to crab and the smelt to smelt. The birds took to flight at differing tilts of the earth from summer to spring to fall to winter each a season of its own. But we looked to the sky and told time what it ought to be like. We actually measured it with candles and hour glasses and sticks in the sand that grew and evolved all the way from Big Ben to Apple-Watches. Yes, we have ordered time with devices that tell time rather than waiting for time to tell us.

We hear the terms; marking time, taking time, time out, end times, and so on and on, ad infinitum with an obsession for it.

Infinity… sheeze, that’s a long time. It is a measure of distance too… time and space… the speed of light in light years. It's a concept that's damned near impossible for me to grasp from here. The earliest time that life forms first appeared on Earth is unknown. They may have lived as early as 4.28 billion years ago, and the Earth is but 260 million years older at 4.54 billion years of age... Not much time at all.

I, what is called George, came around at the tail end of that period. I came out of Eileen Maddox Couper’s womb August 9^th, 1946. I was her first and only son after giving birth to two beautiful girls before me. One more girl came along afterwards and that made me the only son with three sisters.

My birth had nothing to do with the anniversary of the dropping of the big one on Nagasaki… the second incineration of a city but that was the day I was born. 

Back then the medical profession thought nothing of using forceps and medicating the hell out of labor pains. Science was determined to alleviate suffering by extracting all pain from living and the first cause of said suffering was thought to be the pain of birth… for both mother and child. I don’t know whether this was my case, but I liked to tell people in bars and tramp camps that was what was wrong with me. It certainly wasn’t my fault. I knew something was amiss, but I couldn’t figure any logical explanation for where the roads wound through the thickets and brambles of my life.

Well, this is about time. My first novel was titled A Time Ago and Then. It's about time and I told my story with the gloves off using the vehicle of Max McGee. But I want posterity to have the unabridged version of it for the sake of my daughter, Alanna. Our stories are written in time. They are about our times. For histories to be written it takes time to digest what is happening now. 

Time: I have no idea what is left of it for me. I'm just hoping it makes sense to someone... Maybe I'm crying out in the wilderness for compassion to evolve into something that doesn't believe it must exterminate Evil to make room for Good for the time being.

Time's Up --- Half of a Half-arsed Reflection. (Answer to a young girl telling me that I'm only as old as I think).

   
   Time... without getting all Einstein about it, I know a little about time... it's running out for me. I had plenty of it once. A young girl told me that we are only as old as we think. My physician might differ and so does my calendar.

   I remember things from the past. #1 was how I felt about time. I never felt as though I had enough of it. Not really... even when I sang along with Mick and the boys time was never on my side. It was always marching and the Monster-Faker of it was that there was no stamp that guaranteed I would have another day... another minute... another second... of it.

    When did we start measuring it? Again, my intention isn't to get all Einstein about it. This is personal. I am trying to wrap my head around time because logically I don't have much left... so much for only being as old as I think sweetheart.... don't worry, I'm not trying to win an argument... just stating a fact. I started measuring it right away... well, as early as I can remember right away. I watched the shadow of the sun move around a coke bottle in Copeland Park. We lived there until I was four, so it had to be within that span that I saw it move.

   I remember catching the school bus before I was enrolled in kindergarten and riding it because I wanted to go where my sisters went. I was discovered and sent back home... beaten by time again. My sisters taunted me saying I was too little... no one said too young... they said too little because they hadn't equated time with size. I took comfort in that because I was already a time genius and knew that the odds were in my favor that I had more time to live since they were older. Older is another word indicating that it has nothing to do with what I think of it.... no more than saying I'm only as tall as you think, honey. 

   It amazes me to this day how confused a dial clock's face was to me. When did we learn that? First or second grade?... nah, it couldn't have been as late as the third. Digital clocks are easier for kids, I hear. That's too bad because they might begin to think that there is no history to, or future for, time... it's a bunch of Buddha type of here and now stuff and that's all time is. 

   This isn't where I meant to go with this. I wanted to write about time and history and then I got intimate about it. Damn it, and now I'm out of time to write anything more profound than this. 

    Time's up for this half-arsed reflection.