4-14-12

Imagine seeing a sunset for the last time...
Imagine watching a hundred years just pass you by...

When I was 8 it was hard to imagine what a decade really meant, and much harder to understand centuries and millenniums, but time apparently has always been an easier subject for me than for others.  I feel like a kindred spirit to those who are long past.  I've come to the realization that God put me in exactly the right century and decade because in my heart I'm way to independent and headstrong for my own good, but at the same time, I love the romance of the past... and honestly, the stench and blood that comes from it when you really look amongst the pages.  I like all of that.

Celtic tribes in the pre-roman period.
the Elizabethan Court
Edwardian nonsense between upstairs and downstairs
Egypt when the pharaohs delved far too much into the supernatural
the Roman roads that Paul walked
men and women who dared resist a blind populace and a fascist "Nazi" political party during sacred wartime
the drives of angry Apaches who saw their entire world being stolen from them
red lipstick, gloves, and broken women hiding in their picture perfect 1952 bathrooms

I like time.  I like time past.  And i have always had a good sense of how time passes, how it flies, and how all those things fit together like a great, and gloriously intricate tapestry woven by the hands of the Almighty.

My students do not have this gift.  It's hard for them to realize that WWII was in the 40s, and not the 90s.  They just don't understand the difference.   They can't put together why it's illogical that Christianity could come before Judaism.  Some of them really believe that if it isn't happening now, and didn't happen in their lifetime, it does not affect them.  Yet their conscious lives have never seen a time without undeclared war.  They life in the dreadful aftermath of two buildings falling, and don't care why they fell, and they are too blind to make the connections of this then that then this then that, and that is why you live here, now, today.

So, today, at 11:40pm, will mark the 100th anniversary of the RMS Titanic colliding with an iceberg in the North Atlantic.  One hundred years have passed since that fateful night.  Fourteen years have passed since I first saw the iconic movie made about it in theaters.  That was the late 1990s.  In my head, I still live in the 20th c.  It's the one I was born in, the one I learned about time in.  I remember the nineties.  I remember learning about the eighties, and knowing I had been born in that decade.  I grew up with a old neighbor man, Mr. Mac, who had been a radio operator in World War II.  I grew up knowing my uncle had been in Vietnam, my grandparents born in the 30s and 40s.  I heard stories of the Depression from people who lived through them, and stories from my dad of seeing KISS and Aerosmith rock concerts live in the middle of the drug-era.  I have to remind myself that 2000 was more than ten years ago, because I still think 1990 was ten years ago.  I understand the progression of time, but I have to stop and remind myself that it affects me too, and I am moving forward, not backwards.  Imagine what the next sixties are going to be like?  The American girl Samantha was me - in time - a century ago...  It has been a century since Titanic went down.  Centuries can be studied... but they also just... pass...

The story itself is tragic beauty.  So many people just wanting a better life in the land of freedom who spent their entire life savings just to be locked in the bottom of a sinking ship.  Bodies... frozen... and a ship stopped for the night not 30 minutes away.  When I was 8, Titanic made me fall in love with the beauty of the ship, with the sea, and with the winsome Jack Dawson.  At 23, the film and the knowledge of the actual tragedy makes me pause.  One hundred years... and women my age died with their babies in their arms truly because of human folly...  One hundred years later that still happens, but 1990 wasn't ten years ago, and time has marched on.  I am completely changed.  Yet, I still feel a kindredship with time.  I still fall back into the pages of history, and watch this story unfold into deeper depths.  There is so much we do not know.  And time goes on.