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BEST BEFORE
Sunday Nov. 29, 2015
Fiction writers get to arrange their chapters, choose their endings.
We all do.
If you thought this preview or dress rehearsal, you heard wrong. Lives get strewn with joys, fears, adventures or headlines, deadlines and airlines, travel or local-ness – there is only one way out. Wishing for alternatives, I’d try one, not to be first, but to have a chance at something different than everyone expects.
Cryogenics? No. Going to Mars? No.
Life may look like some dead-end street.
I hold that view. It shouldn’t feel dead until the very end.
All perception, isn’t it?
We have nothing but time, nothing but opportunity, nothing but risks and thrills.
Life need not have a best-before date – our ‘best’ parts over, then it’s all downhill? Were our best times all left there, where we spent youth with no requirement to account for time, money, actions?
Youth wasn’t on our side. It was our side!
Down that tunnel to see my dead-end, I see a cul-de-sac opportunity for turning around, heading somewhere else while preserving, postponing my final destination, going as fast as I can in some other direction. Life’s a two-headed coin, no best-before date on life’s other side. We aren’t milk cartons.
Or are we?
Long drives alone, so much time, considering life doesn’t pass by – doesn’t drive by or pass through overnight, doesn’t linger in memories. Over before it substantially begins, those first 50 or 60 years should be in preview mode, like going to movies: coming attractions …
If you’ve wasted decades not fulfilling dreams, then you better hustle – because science’s efforts to extend life-span isn’t moving quite that fast …
Mark Kolke
P.S.: driving back from Fort Saskatchewan last night – I caught Randy Bachman’s Vinyl Tap show, big full yellow moon rising – old tunes, spectacular sky – lifetime of driving with a radio playing. Reminiscing between my ears. Not always alone Saturday nights, but surely there have been too many of those …
written / published from Calgary, AB
morning walk: -8C/18F, calm and clear, Gusta had a very long walk – I accompanied her; good to be away, but good to be home too. Another great sleep … perhaps a trend developing?
Reader feedback:
IDEAL IDEA COLLISIONS
Speaking of backwater places … Hi Mark. Still getting settled here in Ladysmith BC, away from the bustle of Calgary until we return for Christmas with the family before going to Mexico for the balance of the winter. Talk about backwaters. Compared to Calgary life moves at a glacial pace here, noticeable also in Nanaimo to our north and Victoria to the south. Puerto Angel Mexico is even more isolated and bucolic doesn't begin to describe it, substitute fishermen for shepherds, but you get the idea. Perhaps will have more time for musings of my own. Enjoy your musings as always. Cheers my friend, DM, Ladysmith, BC
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