counting Time

New Year's Eve and much will be written about what a terrible year 2019 was and how evil mankind has become (okay humanity or humankind, but it still has the word man tucked subtly away inside it, but whatever), and indeed it was a tough year for many and I'm ready to move on into a new decade even though I know full well the numbering is a purely human construct and It won't really be 2020, it'll be whatever. Maybe the Jewish calendar is better, 5780, but that also is of human doing. We could start with 13 billion 7 hundred thousand something I guess, but it would still be from our human perspective, wouldn't it. I mean, what notions and notations of Time are other creatures in our Milky Way and in the other 200 billion galaxies perceiving, not to mention those in other universes of the multiverse. Whoever can't conceive of this, your God is too small.

Sure enough though, Time has gotten the best of us, starting on me in September 1935 and then the unexpected jolts that jar themselves permanently into our memories as each of us goes along. December 7, 1941. January 23, 1947. Sunday, September 13, 1953, standing at the curb and waving as my parents drive away from me on campus at the University of Florida, leaving me to my own devices for the next season and rest of my life. Watching with horror on Tuesday morning, September 11, 2001 as the planes flew into the twin towers and knowing life had changed in those two instants, as fire blew out the other side of the buildings. May 2018 and October 2018, going where no father wants to go, and seeing all of it hurtle into Category 5 Hurrication Exile that for us apparently ended mid-August 2019, though it keeps returning to remind us that life is not an empty dream but a highway going somewhere including through the night with nails in the road.

Longfellow, "Tell me not in mournful numbers", I'm pretty sure Warren memorized and recited that poem while we were in Cove School, when I and so many others were getting up and doing limericks and ditties.

What am I looking forward to in 2020 besides maybe a new set of hearing aids to replace these I've had eight or ten years? I'll think about it and get back to you. This morning, go to the church and meet a truck that's delivering shelves to my office to replace those the hurricane did in. Tyndall to the barbershop, commissary and gas station. Florida 36 Virginia 28, and notwithstanding they're ranked 13 and 14, I'm not looking forward to the Michigan Alabama game tomorrow. 

In the meantime, as my friend wished me, Happy Leap Year.

T