Once Upon A Time in America

Although I have seen neither Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter nor Oliver Stone's Lincoln (portrayed by an Irish actor...similar to Elizabeth being played by an Aussie...), though I most likely will see the latter, I am no less aware of the "Lincoln Hype" of late. So much, that dare I say it, Lincoln is in danger of overexposure, like so many, many things in America. Once the band wagon starts a rolling, there's no stopping it, until the next fad, that is.

And, sadly to say, it seems that that is all Lincoln is right now, a fad. It seems that nothing would put you into bad favor more than saying something negative about Lincoln. A CNN report shows that bi-partisan agreement votes Lincoln as the best President ever.

Yet, the reality that I see is not that of Lincoln bringing the country together, but rather fraction upon fraction of the fabric of the Stars and Stripes seems to be showing lately. I do not see the Land of Lincoln when I read about politics there, but that is supposedly what everyone champions. So, where is the disjunct?

The rift is in Time. It is fine to talk about a dead President and how he tried to unite, but when we are in the Present, it is almost counter the grain to even suggest a current President could unite. Lincoln has become legend, and is no longer history. And, when history becomes legend, it loses its true hold on the Present. When the man becomes a myth, the responsibility to live up to his standards ceases to apply. It becomes transcendent, and becomes the stuff of movies, not motions in Congress.

When I was in India, Lincoln was far and away the most well-known American, along with MLK and Bill Gates, but, there, the kids actually knew his words, not that he was an axe-wielding vampire killer. I swear, if I see one more, stupid series based on Vampires, I will scream. The only logical next step is "My Vampire's Vampire is a Vampire!" Seriously, people. Get over the vampires...

I digress.

Back to Lincoln. What is amazing is how recent in history Lincoln actually is. For some, he is literally only a few generations back (my mother's family included), but the world of Lincoln is light years away. The speed in which America grew and developed, like an adolescent on steroids, is mind-boggling when you view the History of Europe, much less something like India or China. As such, the relativity of Time's arrow seems so much further for me in America than when I go to Brussels, for example and think of King Leopold, who was before Lincoln, but is so much more tangible than thinking of the gangly man from Illinois taking office and taking on the biggest challenge of the country's history.

I imagine that Lincoln's comet will burn brightly right now, but within a few weeks or months at the most, it will disappear again from sight, perhaps to come back in another sesquicentennial. Will his words and deeds, however, burn as brightly in the schoolrooms when learning history, or will he be lumped together with Buffy and Sookie Stackhouse? Or, much like the looming fate of the lowly Lincoln Penny, will he just become a thing of the Past?

Into the Slipstream

When Fall comes around, I am reminded of my childhood time in Kentucky. Or rather, when I am in a place where Fall comes around since it didn't really last year when I was in India, and sometimes in Austin it was a blink of the eye, but here in Belgium, Fall is a serious season, spanning several months with a multi-colored display of foliage and the world-famous orchard harvest from the Haspengouw areas. Belgium is replete with trees and when the Fall falls, there are a LOT of leaves.

Today, I saw a group of kids playing in huge piles of leaves that they had made. However, given that this is the Time that it is, they of course were filming it all on smart phones, probably sending uploads to everyone within seconds of having just plunged into the swiftly decaying midden heap of leaves.

Back in the day, in Kentucky, of course we did not have the smart phones to share our experience, but it was such great fun to rake up giant piles of Poplar, Maple, and Oak leaves and taking off like Charlie Brown go flying into them, smelling the damp, musty, earthy aroma that is unmistakably the perfume of Autumn's enchantment.

Though this is no new sentiment, it is again through the eyes of youth that we realize how jaded we can become, how needy we are for entertainment, for something to happen, for something to mean something, for Time to go by and we "got something done," and for the sense of feeling guilty for wanting to do something silly or fun, or taking the Time to rake up a whole pile of leaves, just for the sake of scattering them again, like Buddhist monks spending weeks on a sand mandala, only to whisk it away with a dry branch.

We want permanence in an impermanent world. What is wrong with this picture? I was thinking about what it would be like if one had grown up in an equatorial region and then for the first time, without anyone telling that person what was happening, to then travel somewhere where the Summer turned to Fall. Think about that. It would seem as if literally the entire world was dying! What a shock that would be. It would signal the end of the seemingly permanent status of sun up/sun down at 6 and 6 with the same temperature all year round. Suddenly, the impermanence of Reality would be thrust upon you. Without warning, that would be overwhelming to say the least, not to mention Winter.

I was talking with my daughter the other day about the difference amongst the divisions of Time: seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, and years, etc. We were talking about how the mo(o)nths are related to the Moon and the year to the Sun. There was an eclipse the other day in Australia, which thinking of Twain, is yet another instance of thrusting the seemingly permanent existence of the Sun and/or Moon into a tailspin of impermanence and Chaos. Again, imagine the impact of that if one did not know what was happening...

But, that is like our lives and memories. We try to fix some sense of pattern upon an ever-changing stream of vicissitudes, grasping at the bank of the river of Time as we float on down, having the bank of the Present "seem" to recede in the Past.

And, then, at times, with the smell or sight, those two come crashing together in some Proustian digression, as when I thought back to diving headlong into the leaves in our backyard in Brownsboro Farms outside of Louisville. But, as soon as it was there, it was gone and I was back in Antwerp, nearly 40 years later...

The seasons do bring out reflections if we let them, or they can signal hope, or for others despair. Yet, they will continue, and to stubbornly hold onto the Summer, when the Fall is here, is futile. Let go of the bank and enjoy the ride down the slipstream...