Sunday, December 6, 2009

FORGET THE MOVIES, TIME TRAVEL IS ALREADY HERE

Hollywood loves movies about time and space travel. And who hasn't dreamed about it? But as science-fiction becomes more science than fiction every new day, maybe it's the time and the space to realize we can already do it. Every Christmas season...!

The trick -- really, the art -- of time/space travel during this month is to permit your heart to control your head just long enough to allow magic to replace logic. Best place to try this might be strolling down the Magnificent Mile at its seasonal height...or watching faith-filled kids line up for department store Santa's...or studying the gentleness in the face of that relentless Bell Ringer...or shedding a sweet tear at a midnight service...or perhaps just in your bathrobe alone at night sitting next to your living room Tree.

These are those small shards of the interior life when your heart suddenly feels the whoosh of "travel" back to your un-examined joy at sighting what you were sure was the sleigh in the sky...tearing open your first Christmas morning gifts from the jolly old fella, with Mommy and Daddy so very young and so very close...giddily explaining to your friends how amazing Santa was to have remembered all you asked for...then years later, sharing these same moments of magic with your own newborn.

If Ebeneezer could do it with his ghosts, we can do it with our hearts. Travel in both time and space to those indelible flashbulbs of life when this was a season in which troubles were tamed, music was everywhere, love crammed the hearts of anyone you met, and somehow somewhere you just knew that the Babe of Bethlehem had forever made our little complicated lives worth living.

Well -- that's my theory of relativity. What's yours...?

4 comments:

  1. I "travel" every day!!

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  2. Jack,
    Unfortunately, as we grow older the "traveling" between these seasons seem to get shorter and reflections of earlier years seem to fade! The scenes along the Magnificent Mile never fade however.

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  3. "The trick -- really, the art -- of time/space travel during this month is to permit your heart to control your head just long enough to allow magic to replace logic."

    What a beautiful image! I am going to try and do this more often!

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  4. Jerry. it's true -- age does its thing. But while the Magnificent Mile still looms large and lovely for me, so do the twinkling-tree side streets of our once-upon-a-time Austin.

    As for you, "anonymous, I'd say: keep trying! I know I will

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