All Alone in the Night − 12 May, 2008
I haven't kept track of how many Babylon 5 references I've made in this blog, or for that matter in my music, but it's got to be several dozen by now. (Even Points of Departure was the title of a B5 episode.)
At any rate, "All Alone in the Night" is an excellent title for this week's portion of the journey.
Hannah is back in Virginia. This is the last time she will be there alone. By the end of June, we will be there, together. But for now, she's spending a week up at headquarters.
The fuse that's been burning for the past few months has almost made it to the flashpoint. It seems surreal. Already a sort of perceptual shift has occurred.
Before, I couldn't really see myself past the point of the move. Now, finally, I have back that odd ability of mine to look forward and see myself looking back. No, I don't mean the ability to see the future -- I'm never able to explain this to people who can't do it, or who have never felt it, any more than it would be possible to explain green to someone born blind. Either you feel it or you don't.
But hey, I have to try, one more time. I've got my own version of All Alone in the Night going on here, after all.
You can probably imagine a bit forward in time, say, to a time when you've finished reading this article. Focus on it for a moment. Now think of you in the future, having finished the article, looking back on this moment when you were thinking about your future self.
If that just confused you, well, join the legions who came before you. For the rest of you -- there were a few out there, I suspect, who felt that familiar shock I experience. Well, not really a shock. A sort of mental jab, maybe like the thing that happens when you plug a fan into a wall outlet and it hasn't been turned off. A spark? A sense of connection spanning the temporal distance? I short circuit of the narrative flow?
It's unpleasant, I'll grant you that. See, I can flash forward all the way to the time that I'm dead. I can feel there's a moment, hopefully far off, when I no longer exist.
Looking back at the present time from that moment is horrifying. You literally feel time sliding away out from under you -- just as an ant must feel, sliding down the sides of a pit, toward the waiting ant-lion.
I'll tell you one thing. It does tend to give you the ability to "live each day as though it were your last." Sometimes, just as I'm about to drift off to sleep, I feel that inevitable mortality pointing down the timestream toward me like a shotgun full of asteroids. When that happens, I jump.
Hannah's usually there to catch me.
Not tonight, though.
As for the now, I can see ahead to the point where I'm no longer in this house. I guess I'm appreciating my time here more -- I can see it running out. Already, I can feel that future self looking back at me, remembering a time that he can never rebuild or recover. Gone, buried beneath the sands like an abandoned city on the edge of a particularly voracious desert.
This is the last full measure, and the barline's approaching fast.
Comments:
intrepideddie (May 12, 2008. 03:02am)
That little exercise freaked me out a bit. Or maybe it was that can of strange mushrooms I ate...
peahayes (May 12, 2008. 04:15am)
I'm beginning to think of you as someone with super-hero-like powers. Your uncanny ability to focus. This ability to look forward and see yourself looking back. But your powers have been ones you've had to channel. You found music for your ability to focus. How could this other ability be channeled? I love it that "Hannah's usually there to catch me", but I wish I knew what that looked like.
bmccosar (May 12, 2008. 08:54pm)
You know, I've been looking for a long time, and I don't think I'm the only person with "flash forward"s, but I have a darn hard time translating the experience into words. You'd think the lookahead would make me the ultimate task master, but sometimes it leads to just the opposite -- what's the point of building a sand castle when you are fully aware, with each bucket of sand, that the tide will inevitably wash it all away? Probably it's not enough to get me into the Justice League. The Superfriends, maybe, if I campaign against Wendy and Marvin . . . .
peahayes (May 12, 2008. 11:12pm)
But in the larger sense, unless we are truly unusual individuals, just about everything we do will be washed away eventually. It doesn't mean we shouldn't do things. You are more keenly aware of it. The rest of us don't think about it. But with your keener sense, you can find ways to calculate how to make that thing that will eventually be washed away mean more while it's here.
bmccosar (May 12, 2008. 11:40pm)
I guess that's why a phrase that Lorien said (on Babylon 5, of course) has resonated so long with me: "Only those whose lives are brief can imagine that love is eternal. You should embrace that remarkable illusion; it may be the greatest gift your race has ever received."
intrepideddie (May 13, 2008. 04:57am)
B5 was such a good series -- and dang you have a good memory of the episodes. Aaaaannnndddd, steering back to the comic book / cartoon topic... Justice League? Superfriends? Nah. Way too mainstream. I'd put you on Hellboy's team of weirdos. Uh, no offense.
bmccosar (May 13, 2008. 10:14am)
Well, if you're going to go there, I'd be a better fit for the Doom Patrol (Grant Morrison era). I believe the position of "Chief" is open . . . .