This Day and Age

Nostalgia just ain't what it used to be.

You know, aircraft got invented three years into the twentieth century and it took over forty years before they moved on to jet propulsion. Another couple decades until the first satellite. And then, just over a decade later, we were watching men on the moon on television.

Oh, and TV, let's talk about TV. Farnsworth got TV working for real in the '30s. Thirty-five years later most of us were still watching our two or three available channels black and white TV on a mostly round tube. A decade later the TVs were color and solid state, but the screens were still tubes small. A decade after that, the first VCRs showed up. Then, within twenty years TVs were flat, sixty-inch screens, on which you could watch a couple hundred stations, which you could pause and rewind and save for later. Oh, and 3D, don't forget 3D.

Or you could just watch movies on your phone, which has a color touch-sensitive screen, can stream music, or browse a global information network that no one could have even imagined back when airplanes had propellers. Which, by the way, was a time when phones were black and had rotary dials, just like they did up until about the same time Armstrong was boogieing on the Sea of Tranquility.

Most of the tech that I had when I was a kid was pretty much completely recognizable as descendants from what my parents had when they were kids. But my kids, I have problems even explaining things that I grew up with. I mean, who the hell knows what a slide rule is anymore? Calculators were so new you weren't allowed to use them for tests when I was in college, and now the concept of a calculator that isn't an app or a function on some other gadget is so retro that it's kitsch.

Or, you can flip it around… Can you imagine trying to explain iPhones, personal computers, and the Internet as a practical reality to someone few decades ago? That was serious sci-fi stuff.

And yet… and yet, 2001 came and went and we don't have any orbiting Hilton hotels, no lunar colonies, no commercial space travel. No personal helicopters, jetpacks, CITY OF THE FUTURE or any of that amazing stuff we all thought we'd have. How is it fair that my kids think everything that I grew up with is only one step more advanced than napping flint knives and arrowheads and yet the closest I'll ever get to space travel is watching the reports of the Rich and Famous flying Virgin Galactic?

But then, I guess we can just be glad we aren't slaves to Skynet, servants of our ape masters, or eating Soylent Green, yet.

This Day and Age - 6/7/11

You'd think, in this day and age, that a body could be disposed of without much fuss. Blenders, composters, vaporizers, dehydrators and laserbots are ubiquitous, and shit, if that fails, there's always the airlocks, but no - for some reason, people still want to get involved, even for subhuman trash like miners and hookers and mutants. They police the airlocks. And the DNA trackers in the disposal units are awfully nosy.

So, like some Viking throwback, I'm back to the pigs and the knives. I don't know why, but folks like me just can't seem to keep up with the times.

True Crime in Guatemala City

So there we were, standing in the middle of the dusty central bus corral in Guatemala City. We were staring at our luggage, piled on top of the bus that we were going to take to Chichicastenango - the biggest scam going involved loading tourists' luggage onto a bus, and then tossing it across to another bus when they got inside. So there I was, squinting into the tropical sun, casually shrugging off the driver as he earnestly urged us to get on the bus, please, senores.
Within seconds, thin brown hand reached around my face and deftly snatched my sunglasses off my face. The keeper strap was expertly yanked free, and suddenly, my tender blue gringo peepers were watering in the harsh dusty glare. I was momentarily nonplussed, but then instinct took over, and before I could think, I was turning and reaching behind me - apparently, just quickly enough to brush the thief's hand. Goddammit-!
I glimpsed a thin teenage boy, maybe fifteen, taller than me by a few inches, and dressed in a loose white t-shirt and tennis shoes. Short dark hair, nice features, and a handful of my sunglasses. It was just a glimpse, though, because as soon as he saw me turn, he was also turning to sprint through the crowds around the buses and across the center of the corral. Like a hound on a scent, I sprinted after him.
He was confident that no gringo would ever chase him - despite my daypack and the Teva sandals on my feet, I started gaining on him as the crowds thinned out and he started to slow down. Unable to believe my luck, I poured on the gas, and hoped that the rumble of the diesel engines all around us would cover the sound of my feet pounding the dirt behind him.
I was almost close enough to body slam the kid when he looked over his shoulder and saw me behind him - the look on his face was priceless, a weird mixture of shock and fear. Unfortunately, having a tiny, enraged gringa bearing down on him like a pissed-off badger was enough to put him back into "run" mode, and he took off again just as I was close enough to grab the back of his shirt - he twisted as he ran, and the shirt slipped out of my sweaty fingers. Damn!
He was taller and longer-legged, but he was also malnourished, fifteen, and evidently unused to running fast - if I'd had another quarter-mile, I think I could've caught the little shit, after which my adrenaline-fueled, rage-induced plan was to pound the fear of Jesus into him and get my glasses back. Shit, I didn't have any money to buy new glasses, or I wouldn't have been waiting for a chicken bus in the middle of Guate City. I really, REALLY wanted to catch that kid, like I'd never wanted anything else in my life up to that point.
He had other plans, though. They involved veering towards the periphery of the parking lot, jumping over a stack of watermelons, and disappearing into the covered produce market on the fringe of the corral. Unable to stop right away, I also leaped over the waist-high pile of melons, then skidded to a halt in the midst of a bunch of shoppers and indigenous ladies in acid-trip-colored huipiles. "El ladrone!" I gasped. "A donde va??"
Several of the stall keepers made discreet pointing motions against their waists, but then, as I looked around at the crowd of Guatemalans, I suddenly realized my position - a small, single, blue-eyed blonde, lost in a crowd of people who were evidently scared of at least one thief. What if there were more? Crap. And my boyfriend was undoubtedly still standing near that bus, wondering where I'd gone. Crap! And who knew when it was scheduled to leave....I'd taken off my watch, to keep that from getting stolen, too. Crap.
So - after another minute or so of vacillating, staring around the market, looking for another glimpse of that fucking thief, I finally let my head take over, and turned and jogged back to my bus. I was so over-adrenalinated that I could easily have torn someone's head off at that point - I mean, I was poor - I'd worked my ass off for every dollar I'd ever earned, and to have someone take something from me struck me as a huge injustice. It wasn't the sunglasses that irked me as much as what the whole experience represented - that I was vulnerable, a target, insecure, and easy to steal from. Why?? Why me? Why couldn't I have simply caught the little fucker, cut his liver out, and left him for dead....I mean, er, gotten my things back and went on my way?
The rest of the day was tough, and I had trouble sleeping that night, but I bought a pair of obviously stolen sunglasses from another vendor in Chichicastenango's market later that week, and that should have been the end of the experience, right? And yet I still wake up sometimes, thinking about seeing that kid's head again through the bus window as we trundled out of the bus depot, strolling through the crowd, looking for another target.
Even today, even with both of us older and greyer and wiser - I would kill him in a heartbeat, in the most brutal way possible. Over a pair of sunglasses. I'd like to say "it's the principle of it", but really, I would do it for the fun of it.
Nice, huh?

This day, and age

Today's my birthday. Just another day in the year, another opportunity to ponder the arbitrary celebration of one particular moment in time as being more significant than any other, as if it represented some sort of video-game leveling up or something. Still, we're conditioned in our thinking to attach significance, to find patterns in the chaos and so: the calls, the cards, the co-workers taking me out to lunch. And I confess, it's hard not to see some sort of milestone in turning six hundred years old.

I trot out all the old lines, of course..."Yeah, I'm turning 200 - again!". "It's not the centuries, it's the light-years...", all the traditional bits. There's odd comfort in it, even if a large part of it is the smirking disdain for the cliches.

The funny thing is, I really don't feel six hundred. Or rather, I should say I don't feel like what I grew up thinking six hundred was SUPPOSED to feel like. I remember when I was younger, even up to my 100th, that 600 was OLD - maybe it's just that life-extension tech has gotten better, but I remember looking at anybody past the half-millennium and thinking that they'd just...shut down. That they'd accepted that their prime was over and that it was time to just sit down and stop moving. I know the culture's changed - they say 500 is the new 200, and folks my age have refused to accept the expectation that their lives are pretty much done and used up at that point, but I think there's more to it. I think the life I lead, the career choices I've made and the people I associate with, have all kept me feeling younger, more engaged. I even look at others my age and while they're certainly not the six-century fogeys I remember from my youth, I still secretly feel that I am younger and more alive at heart than any of them.

I raise mine eyes unto the hills

It's a quote I always get wrong: "I raise my eyes up to the mountains from whence comes my salvation". Probably because down deep I don't really believe in Salvation. Oh, yes, inspiration, and even rescue but not really salvation. I don't know what it is about mountains though. I can be having a down, dirty, hot, sweaty day - cranky as all hell - and "raise my eyes" to the mountains and be refreshed, even if only for a moment. I could babble on about how monolithic and eternal they are, etc. etc. I could even go "gollum" for a moment and contemplate the deep dark secrets that must live in the roots of the misty mountain.

But really, when it boils down to it, I just really love mountains. I love the seaside, but I fear it, too as should anyone who has contemplated the destructive capabilities of the ocean. I admire the ocean, the waters and the tides but I could not live among them. I could live in the mountains. I've thought about it - just packing up and moving deep into the hills, disappearing from the sight of men into some hidden valley but really, I'm a social beast and it would not last. Because, after all, you bring your demons with you... and to live alone with them in the hollow hills would probably be something that not even the mountains could salve.

Subject:: This day and age

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