Tuesday, January 03, 2006
In the Next Measure of Time
In the next measure of time, will there be bombs/missiles/airstrikes, playgrounds under polluted skies, or public school programs scrounging for pennies and dimes? Would a war-free reality, then just be, as phrased by Langston Hughes, 'a dream deferred', for another decade, season, or day? Would a climate's natural season's be packaged and sold, to a post-millennium market, privileged enough to afford fresh drops of rain, or snow on a winter day? Will every bullet in Amadou Diallo's body be a reminder of a history that the universe will refuse to repeat? Will there be immigration and deportation hearings adjudicated across the rest of the solar system? Will the former supermodels have plastic surgery to add meat to their thighs? When convictions are reversed, will the prosecution be serving jail time?
Will school bus drivers become obsolete, when children finally learn to fly? If there are any cars left on the street, will they be programmed to function automatically, with each city's red lights? Would cable TV be a microchip implanted into the left brain? Would continents collide, so that borders are blurred even in the daytime? Would the new drugs be 10 dimensional experiences? Will shoelaces automatically untie? Will post-colonial countries get first dibs on hosting world sporting events? In the next measure of time, would it be possible to choose the navigation of life, between cruise control, default, and each person's very own personal destiny? Will criminalized people of color, ever be recognized as a generation of angels in disguise? Would it be possible for people who commit suicide, to change their mind and come back to life? Would explosives detonate in slow motion, so that it is still possible to save people's lives? Would we remember everything that we had once forgotten to write?
Will school bus drivers become obsolete, when children finally learn to fly? If there are any cars left on the street, will they be programmed to function automatically, with each city's red lights? Would cable TV be a microchip implanted into the left brain? Would continents collide, so that borders are blurred even in the daytime? Would the new drugs be 10 dimensional experiences? Will shoelaces automatically untie? Will post-colonial countries get first dibs on hosting world sporting events? In the next measure of time, would it be possible to choose the navigation of life, between cruise control, default, and each person's very own personal destiny? Will criminalized people of color, ever be recognized as a generation of angels in disguise? Would it be possible for people who commit suicide, to change their mind and come back to life? Would explosives detonate in slow motion, so that it is still possible to save people's lives? Would we remember everything that we had once forgotten to write?
# posted by BaharMeansSpring @ 2:23 AM 
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That's beautiful. What inspired you to write this? and how did you come to the phrase "measure of time" which is pretty unique (at least according to google!). How BIG is this measure...an epoch? an era? a millennum? a blink of an eye?
Thank you for your comment. Are you the same Amir who sent me the poem and quote about diving into life in another comment form? If so, I accidentally erased it when I was trying to correct a technical error. ( I wish it was still posted). A measure of time can be anything, from, as you wrote, "a blink of an eye" to a collection of milleniums.
yes - the other comment was me also. Poe and Rilke... i'm sure you can find the poem and quote elsewhere. still curious as to how you came about the phrase "measure of time".
I was just sitting there, year/century/day -- they were all too defined for what I was trying to write, and i realized that what I was trying to write was exactly that, a measure of time, it just occured to me.
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