Last Ride and other Illusions
Gaining Traction on the Slippery Slope of Time
It has rained in central Portugal since mid-October. Not every day, but pretty damn close. Enough so, fair-weather rider that I am, I went out the first dry day possible, dreary gray sky and puddles be damned. As I have aged, my flexibility has not weathered the storms well and like John Denver sang, I like to have sunshine on my shoulders. This was not that day.
Being incompetent of GPS and most things technical, I soon got lost in a new place along the Mondego River. But I was surprised to enjoy the deserted roads between villages I’d never seen. With confusion of not having the visible sun in the sky, I was able to visit several of those village several times, applying both circular logic and my infallible dead reckoning.
Little boys grow up, but never throw away their toys. For those of you who have an aversion to motorcycles, I ask your indulgence a bit longer because these ramblings are not about those noisemakers that interrupt your otherwise peaceful relationship with the planet, everyday life and all things beautiful. I will speak of something we all share, men, women and all sentient creatures that walk upright, regardless of chosen pronoun, Time.
Irregardless of your ownership of any type of motor vehicle, there are times that we all wonder how much gas we have left in our tanks. I am referring, metaphorically, to your primary vehicle, your body, the one you currently inhabit. And, traditionally, the “gas gauges” in use are more commonly known as watches, hourglasses, calendars, or more broadly measured by the apparent motion of the sun across the sky, the phases of the moon, and the swing of a pendulum.
For a brief moment (empirically insignificant), I digress in the interests of science, do try not to let your eyes glaze over. You may have forgotten from your early education that “Time” is one of the seven fundamental physical quantities in both the International System of Units (SI) and International System of Quantiities. The SI base unit of time is the second, which is defined by measuring the electronic Transition-Frequency of caesium atoms. You, of course, remember that Caseium is a chemical element with the symbol Cs and whose atomic number is 55. More excitingly, Cs is a soft, silvery-golden alkali metal with a melting point of 28.5 °C (83.3 °F), which makes it one of only five elemental metals that are liquid at or near room temperature. Since then, caesium has been widely used in highly accurate atomic clocks. Thanks again to Wikipedia; please donate if you can.
So, in the time honored tradition of looking back or forward at the end/begining of every year, I ask you to ponder for a moment exactly where you are in the space-time continuum. Preface your mental gymnastics with the following words from the introduction to Stephen Hawkin’s Brief History of Time:
If you are still with me, congratulations, you are part of a select group who may actually want answers to questions more poignant than ‘what’s for dinner’ or do we have any more Pinot Noir. Noir indeed!
Consequently, how does anyone gauge how much “juice” is left in one’s tank. Using the standard motorcycle as the metáfora, some may not realize that classic motorcycles did not have gas gauges, relying on the far superior technology of the petcock, no erotica intended. These mysterious devices were manual and, like Archimedes, operated with a lever.1
So, do people have a reserve function? Ah, to be or not, indeed. Anecdotally it would seem some people do, not to mention those “who come back from the dead”. One of the requirements of CPR is absence of heartbeats, but even here the lines are blurred. I have a dear friend who died in a hospital corridor during a routine follow up orthopedic visit. His acute heart attack was immediately treated by ER experts for 30 minutes without response and he was declared deceased. Only when they went to move him did staff realize he had self-actualized for an encore. I believe that was four years ago and he has since bowled another 300 game, walks two miles daily and sends hilarious emails regularly.
Dead Reckoning. What if there were such a signpost? Not the Dead End sign on the road, but a sign on your life calendar like an expiration date or that Monopoly card that reads “Do not pass go! Do not collect $200”? Helpful or hinderance? What if Matthew was right when he wrote “Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.”
Well, we don’t have a gauge, there are few reliable sign posts, and with all that in mind, I am NOT going to wish you a Happy New Year. Yesterday is a memory (elastic and unreliable), tomorrow is an unsecured promise without collateral, so … Happy New DAY! You woke up, you read this, congratulations. Don’t stop now. Please.
And maybe it’s better that way, not having a gauge. Some say we only exist in the present, a vibration of that Caesium atom and then …? Maybe another, and another. Jean-Paul Sartre suggested that Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal. I think I like that a lot. Live life now, each moment, not like there is no tomorrow. Live it like you still have a full tank.
A shorter tube near the bottom of said tank delivered fuel to the engine when the lever is turned to reserve, otherwise a higher tube (designated lever position “on”) provided fuel until the level in the tank dropped below the level of the higher tube. This interrupted fuel supply and causing the engine to sputter, at which time the operator reached down and moved the lever to reserve. One of the many mysteries of these devices was the ability to produce amnesia in many operators who forgot to switch the lever back to “on” after using the reserve and filling the tank back up. Running out of gas and pushing a 450 lb motorcycle usually provides a permanent cure for this condition.
When asked how he was doing, my FIL used to say, "I got up. all by myself. It is a good day!" Nowadays I get what he meant.