Saturday, June 12, 2010

TIME TRAVEL - NO TICKET REQUIRED

What do each of us have in common with H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Isaac Asimov and Arthur Clarke...? That's right, time travel. And while science is taking steps in this direction, isn't time-travel already well within our grasp...?

Only three requirements: A place! A predisposition! A purpose!

I've time-traveled dozens of times. Most recently last June 6 morning (exactly 66 years after the historic Normandy invasion of Hitler's Europe). I stood there quietly at the corner of Potomac & Menard streets in front of my old school. The precise place where I stood June 6, 1944 as a patrol boy for the student traffic on the way to classes. The physicality was exactly the same -- red brick bungalow, trimmed front lawn, large Poplar tree shading it -- only now had suddenly become then.

My predisposition was to re-experience something of how I and my world felt in that remarkable then. Closing my eyes I could sense the energy of memory sucking me back into that little vortex of a bright June past. Kids asking each other what it meant...neighbors gathering in front of their homes...teachers organizing these enthusiasms as best they could...and a young me with a rush of prayer and pride rarely felt since. Really, I could see and hear it all

Finally, the purpose. Why? After all, then is then; we really only have now. Well, yes and no. Yes, seize the day for this is the only day we have; but no, it is no more foolhardy to revisit where we've been than it would be to smash all our cameras, tear down all our monuments, and deny all our predecessors.

None of us simply happened. We traveled to get here. And that's a journey too extraordinary to simply forget...



1 comment:

  1. I love traveling this way. Sometimes I don't even care to come back. Does that make me a bad person...?

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