Chronos v. Superman

Lightning strikes outside ... Haven't paid attention to whether they're getting closer or further away. The trajectory of life may have us believing that the destination is always moving closer. Many visitors to my office, yesterday, were busy pondering "what's it all about" ... I think I typically sit and fascinate about what is ... and leave it at that. 

My metaphor for Life, as I've mentioned before, is to a stretched canvas with its size and shape partially pre-determined ... and to a palette of paints. I get to paint on it. I can never quite get off what has already taken form and shape ... and dried on my canvas. Oh! I can paint over it but it is not  easily -- if ever -- to be removed. Superman flies backwards around the Earth ... really fast ... and can turn the clock backwards and bring his Lois back to life and then change the History going forward. Some manage to reason through arguments purloined from Quantum Physics that there are parallel universes and maybe even orthogonal ones. Y'think there's one where the L4-L5 in my Lumbar Spine never herniated back in August of 2011. 

Yeah, Superman. You're never around when we need'ya!

I need a SuperGuy or SuperGal to go back to the Monday before the Friday when it all went crazy and the EMT's came and trucked me to the Emergency Room. 

"Hey. Y'want the sirens, Sir?"

Nah. Skip the drama. Just drive fast.

That was a Friday in late August 2011, but it was that Monday night when, in-between two visitors to my office, I went outside to check on something. I was walking in one moment ... then, on the ground and amused just a moment later. They call it "a slip and fall." There was no pain and a great deal of amusement, much like when coming home from an evening meeting this past Winter and walking towards my front door, I lost my balance and fell into the azaleas. In both situations, I found myself tittering with amusement. Maybe the canvas is fuller than I thought.

But back to 2011 and that Friday 97 hours (who's counting) after the fall. Fall? Like a Fall from Grace or just the Fall that is the Fourth Quarter of Life. Dinner was fine even if I began to have twinges in my legs and lower back. M and my youngest was there with her family ... Al, the Ancient Philosopher, and their three kids. By the end of our shared meal, there were more than twinges and within a half hour of their leaving, I was trying to crawl to my car so that M could drive me to the ER. I made it through the front door ... and that was it. Moving or not moving? both came with body-armor piercing pain. 

The wailing old man with his wife attracted neighbors by the time M called 9-1-1 and the rest need not be recorded in any Chronicles. I, as I noted, got limo service to the ER and with enough narcotics I was able to eventually go home. I slept for the next few weeks draped over an ottoman in my office and after some shots in the back and a few months, I was walking pretty straight. I suppose, now, that I believed that I had erased that episode ... that L4-L5 herniation had been expunged from my record. I think it was Joni Mitchell who years ago sang "I was a Free Man in Paris." 

Whenever I believe that I've erased something from my canvas, Chronos eventually shows up to set the time and date straight. 

Afraid! I need her cousins Ortho and Chiro just to stand up, these days. It was most-of-Quarter, ago, that I began realizing that the paint on my canvas and the ink on my letters are both indelible. Feeling a bit sorry for myself ("poor, Howard"), I moaned and kvetched and wrote:

Witnesses (July 1994)

On the bottom of his closet, like two soldiers they stood

A layer of dust demanded “You’ve seen these before”.

Witnesses for what he now couldn’t and once could

When he bought them.

Was it nineteen sixty four?

One at a time, he picked each up, turned it around,

“Look! The pattern on the toes is just the same,

The leather’s still good, the color still brown,

And inside

The author hadn’t changed his name.

Yet they spoke of different times and of a different man

Who wore them then more than a quarter century ago.

These shoes were now witnesses to god’s sinister plan,

That from vibrant forms,

Takes man and transforms him to Lore.

I won't here apologize for feeling a bit sorry for "poor Howard" who -- once again and for the time being -- is wincing with something other than sheer delight each time he stands up. It would do little good and Chronos has, in any case, no Sympathy ... and, just again and for the record, there ain't never no Superman around when y'needs'im!