Natasha Babbitt wandered across the Washington Mall in a long, silky lavender dress on a foggy January morning, searching for the presidential inauguration. She was looking for the bleachers where the Mormon Tabernacle Choir would perform. She was in it; she was running late, as usual, so she had to hurry. The problem was that a thick, clumpy frost covered the endless expanse of lawn before her, and in her sparkly, silver high heals, she could only move ever so slowly, for every step she took sent her on a short, wobbly ski ride across the uneven turf. It was almost as exasperating as waiting for Bruce to get out of the shower at the Trump Hotel across the street earlier that morning, however far back that was. It seemed like an eternity--both in distance and in time. She laughed as she imagined a giant Darth Vader head appearing in the sky above her. "Long, long ago, in a galaxy far, far away." That's how long it had seemed since they'd left their modest home back in Provo, Utah to be here on this important day.
The fog was so dense that she couldn't tell which way to go, and so she headed towards a glow in the mist. It wasn't a steady light though; it seemed to come in great ember waves and then all but go away. It almost seemed like it could be a fire--an odd thing to see on the Washington Mall. Perhaps they have built a bonfire so people can keep warm, she thought. She pictured everyone standing around, drinking hot chocolate, excitedly anticipating the festivities of the day. She would be able to get directions there.
What she had envisioned was not altogether wrong, although what she found horrified her. As she came closer, it was clear a giant cross burned at the base of the Washington Monument. Around it milled a half a dozen or so members of the KKK. All were in gowns, but several had their hoodies off, relaxed, as relaxed as if they were at a campfire. There was a folding table set up with donuts and hot chocolate. She glanced up at the behemoth burning symbol of her Lord and Savior radiating evil in the billowing orange-tinged waves of fog. She was about to turn away, prepared to run, if need be, high heels or not, when someone gently grabbed her arm.
"Would you like some hot chocolate and cookies?"
"What?"
"Hot chocolate and cookies, Mam. Courtesy of the Riverdale Youth KKK Club."
"What?"
"Cookies, Mam. And Hot Chocolate. I can also give you a pamphlet. It's a new America, and we are the new KKK, kinder, gentler, more main stream, if you know what I mean." He winked when he said, "if you know what I mean."
She was still somewhat dazed. She felt like she'd vomit. She held her composure though. It could be dangerous not to. "No thanks. Would you know where the Mormon Tabernacle Choir is performing?"
"Yes Mam. Right over there."
He pointed away from the cross, away from the heat, away from the donuts and hot chocolate. She couldn't tell what he pointed at--it was all just a misty gray wilderness--but she went anyway. Wherever the Choir was, it certainly was not here.
Off she went in her lavender dress and sparkly silvery shoes, slip-stumbling towards her unseen goal. She pictured a high building behind her and a room full of men laughing as they watched her desperately wander through the foggy wilderness looking for some sort of true light.
In that great tower, Darth Vador was handing out cocktails, chuckling in that unique breathy laugh of his. All the wives of the heads of state adored him. Or at least that's what he believed. He held up his glass, cleared his throat, "I'd like to--deep, muffled breath--give a toast--deep, muffled breath--to our new president--deep, muffled breath--and to a new America. The force is strong today."
A round of applause echoed in Natasha Babbitt's head as she made her way through the mist, gently sobbing, yet pushing on, determined to find her way back to a world that made sense.
And then she tripped. She fell forward, and as she did, she could see water coming towards her. It was that long, narrow reflection pool she had seen so often in photographs, the one between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln memorial. At least she sort of knew where she was now. The only problem was it was in the wrong direction. The fall seemed to take hours. It was as if time stopped. She laughed at this thought. Oh how she and the kids hated when Bruce went on and on about his theory about the shrinking nature of time in the last days. That's when she saw Bruce through the mist and the water. He floated on the other side of that steaming liquid, translucent, thin, but ever so radiant. He spoke to her.
"Dear. I'm dead. I should have listened to you. It is dangerous to suck on Halls Cool Berry Breezers in bed after all. Who would have thought? They're small, slippery and melt; you'd think they'd be safe. Anyway, I'm sorry I didn't listen. I didn't fall asleep though. I was sitting up, like you always told me. Anyway, it's not my time yet. Wake up, you have to save me."
Monday, February 26, 2018
Tuesday, February 20, 2018
2017: Bruce R. Babbitt Reflects on Time
1.6.17
I woke up at 3:30 to use the restroom. I laid back down to sleep, and in a matter of minutes, it was 5:30 and the alarm went off. I got up and staggered into the bathroom to urinate again and get a drink of water. I laid back down for a few minutes, drifting in and out of sleep. Afraid that I might drift back into a deep sleep with no alarm set, I forced myself to get up. It was now 5:40. The odd thing was that as far as I could tell it was the same amount of time. Two hours and 10 minutes were the same. There was no difference in the perceived time between 3:30-5:30 and 5:30-5:40. From my perspective, the intervals were the same. When we sleep, time is relative.
It is the same with life. I spent as much time living from ages 5 to 10 as I did living from ages 10 to 20, or for that matter, from ages 20 to 40. Time just keeps speeding up. By the time I finish writing this journal entry, I could be dead.
Bruce R. Babbitt thought a lot about time. It was his job. He was a paleontologist at B.Y.U., and it was not an easy environment for such an occupation. Although most of the general authorities and prophets (both present and in the past) of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints believed in deep time and a very old earth, including Joseph Smith himself, many members did not, and students taking his class often felt he was leading them off the strait and narrow path to salvation even though, from his perspective, he was just teaching them how much time God took to give man a most amazing world.
The ironic thing was, just as Bruce R. Babbitt concluded writing By the time I finish writing this journal entry, I could be dead, he was, in fact, dead.
Well, sort of. He floated at the corner of his bedroom, just below the ceiling, looking down on his corpse slumped over, propped up on the pillows next to his wife Natasha. He was disgusted that spit drooled out of his mouth. Natasha always got upset that his pillowcase was stained yellow. "Sleep with your mouth closed," she'd say. "I can't always be buying fresh pillow cases." She always did. She couldn't stand yellow pillow cases. Here, at his dying hour, he'd spit all over her pillow cases--again. He felt that was a pretty thoughtless way to die; he just didn't know what to do about it.
There, stuck up in that corner of the room (oozed up into it is probably a better description, as if he were a liquid and somebody had turned off gravity), he was also disgusted that he died before getting to the part of his journal entry where he was going to talk about how the age of the earth might be every bit as relative as either the time when we are asleep or the way time speeds up as we age. He had a theory: Even though days were still 24 hours long, they weren't as long as they once were. Time was speeding up as we approached the end of the world. An hour was no longer an hour. It had to be. Each day he worked harder and harder, not because he had to, but he because he wanted to, to do his life's work, and each day he seemed to have less and less time. It drove him crazy. There was so much to learn and do. He realized he'd failed to set up his home teaching appointments. That's what woke him up at 3:30.
Now, here he was dead, and he would never get to visit his families this month, or explore his theory of shrinking time. He would also never get to tell Natasha how beautiful she looked, her long black hair trailing across that big, fluffy pillow in the silky white case. She did know how to make a bed. The beds at Embassy Suites had nothing on hers. And here he'd spent his life drooling all over her work. Very thoughtless indeed.
It was at this moment he felt himself slip up through the ceiling boards (he never noticed the sheet rock) and then enter an intense white light.
I woke up at 3:30 to use the restroom. I laid back down to sleep, and in a matter of minutes, it was 5:30 and the alarm went off. I got up and staggered into the bathroom to urinate again and get a drink of water. I laid back down for a few minutes, drifting in and out of sleep. Afraid that I might drift back into a deep sleep with no alarm set, I forced myself to get up. It was now 5:40. The odd thing was that as far as I could tell it was the same amount of time. Two hours and 10 minutes were the same. There was no difference in the perceived time between 3:30-5:30 and 5:30-5:40. From my perspective, the intervals were the same. When we sleep, time is relative.
It is the same with life. I spent as much time living from ages 5 to 10 as I did living from ages 10 to 20, or for that matter, from ages 20 to 40. Time just keeps speeding up. By the time I finish writing this journal entry, I could be dead.
Bruce R. Babbitt thought a lot about time. It was his job. He was a paleontologist at B.Y.U., and it was not an easy environment for such an occupation. Although most of the general authorities and prophets (both present and in the past) of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints believed in deep time and a very old earth, including Joseph Smith himself, many members did not, and students taking his class often felt he was leading them off the strait and narrow path to salvation even though, from his perspective, he was just teaching them how much time God took to give man a most amazing world.
The ironic thing was, just as Bruce R. Babbitt concluded writing By the time I finish writing this journal entry, I could be dead, he was, in fact, dead.
Well, sort of. He floated at the corner of his bedroom, just below the ceiling, looking down on his corpse slumped over, propped up on the pillows next to his wife Natasha. He was disgusted that spit drooled out of his mouth. Natasha always got upset that his pillowcase was stained yellow. "Sleep with your mouth closed," she'd say. "I can't always be buying fresh pillow cases." She always did. She couldn't stand yellow pillow cases. Here, at his dying hour, he'd spit all over her pillow cases--again. He felt that was a pretty thoughtless way to die; he just didn't know what to do about it.
There, stuck up in that corner of the room (oozed up into it is probably a better description, as if he were a liquid and somebody had turned off gravity), he was also disgusted that he died before getting to the part of his journal entry where he was going to talk about how the age of the earth might be every bit as relative as either the time when we are asleep or the way time speeds up as we age. He had a theory: Even though days were still 24 hours long, they weren't as long as they once were. Time was speeding up as we approached the end of the world. An hour was no longer an hour. It had to be. Each day he worked harder and harder, not because he had to, but he because he wanted to, to do his life's work, and each day he seemed to have less and less time. It drove him crazy. There was so much to learn and do. He realized he'd failed to set up his home teaching appointments. That's what woke him up at 3:30.
Now, here he was dead, and he would never get to visit his families this month, or explore his theory of shrinking time. He would also never get to tell Natasha how beautiful she looked, her long black hair trailing across that big, fluffy pillow in the silky white case. She did know how to make a bed. The beds at Embassy Suites had nothing on hers. And here he'd spent his life drooling all over her work. Very thoughtless indeed.
It was at this moment he felt himself slip up through the ceiling boards (he never noticed the sheet rock) and then enter an intense white light.
Saturday, February 10, 2018
2017: In Gallup, They Take Polls
Gallup, New Mexico, December 31, 2016. Nora James sat at a small desk, lap top open, staring out of the third-story window of the El Rancho Hotel. There wasn't much to see. A slow, steady rain fell, and the streets were metallic in the fading light at the end of the day. Everything looked like bent sheet metal in a room of blue Christmas lights. Directly in front and somewhat below was the vacant Creamland Dairy, which she could only make out because the giant 1960s street lamps hanging over Old Route 66 cast the white cider block and glass facade in a ghostly glow, and because she knew this street so well from her past. It had been part of her narrative on and off for years as she had grown up on the Navajo Reservation. The mild wet weather was not normal though, not this time of year. January is a cold month, and Gallup is a cold place in the winter. Or was. Something was wrong.
As there wasn't much she could do about that, Nora continued to stare out the window of the historic hotel that had become her home for a season. To the right of the abandoned dairy store was an even drabber Kim's Import Plus, a corrugated metal building, also painted white, with four evenly spaced barred windows. The lights were still on, and a blue scene of wide isles and sparsely covered metal shelving systems was visible inside. Apparently Kim was having problems finding the Bikes, Strollers, Bags, Packs, Pictures, Stereos, Speakers, Gifts, Toys and Novelties advertised on two signs the same dimensions of the windows and mounted above in the red corrugated metal trim at the top of the building. It was all too orderly and minimal, especially for an import shop. Nora pictured Monk from the TV series in there manning the counter, refusing a bargain shipment from Taiwan while Kim was gone. "This is junk. We can't take that. Do you have any colored plexi-glass boxes that fit neatly inside one another? Those would look great centered alone on this long shelf over here."
Nora also stared at the grid of numbers on her spread sheet. It was not so sparse, though it too was ordered rather neatly. Yet, it was colorful. She liked color on her Excel tables, and not just for clarity. If one had to stare at data on and off all day, it might as well look pretty. Still, the raw data no matter how nicely presented had led her to the wrong place, and it glared at her, laughing. As she closed the file disgusted, she could hear a Jake brake on a semi in the distance over the slow steady stream of traffic on 66.
She stared out the window again. Beyond the Quality Dairy was the railroad tracks, the wash, and then Interstate 40. As it was almost exactly parallel to her, with a light twist of her head, she could see headlights in both directions; the headlight/tail light scenario would switch as she rotated her head one direction and then the next. For a couple of minutes she just moved her head back and forth like an old typewriter carriage. She even threw in an auditory "Ding" for the hell of it. Her grandma had one of those in the back room at the trading post. She and her cousins would mess around with it. They never typed anything. They just put paper in and pushed the keys, aaaaaaaaassssssssssdddddddfffff, etc until the roller moved all the way over and they heard "Ding."
She closed the Excel file and opened a blank Word document. She wasn't sure why. She just couldn't go over all the different poll numbers anymore. It was time to accept somehow pollsters all across the country had failed. Her numbers for the Navajo Nation and other reservations matched election results fairly closely, but that wasn't enough. She wanted to figure out what went wrong as a whole. But she couldn't. The poll numbers were what they were. The election numbers were what they were. The only problem is that they didn't match and looking at them wasn't going to change that. So, she closed Excel and opened Word simply for something to do.
On her blank document she typed one line:
Tweet it as it is:
She had no plan of tweeting this. It just came to her. She thought she could perhaps watch TV instead. But she didn't want to.
Not bad, she thought. Anything is better than numbers, numbers that lie--just like this weather. She typed some more:
The moon is brighter than the sun; Toledo, Ohio's night life is more vibrant than Manhattan's.
This was fun. She could go on, lie after lie, stated as fact. She bit her lower lip, which was her habit when thinking hard. She knew that because the list could go on, she needed something singular, something odd, an outlier.
Ezra Pound's "In the Station of the Metro" contains more words in it than the Holy Bible, Quran, Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads and Veda Combined.
Ha! She was delighted. For a few minutes anyway. Eventually there was facing being alone in Gallup, New Mexico on New Year's Eve, but she didn't need to do that yet.
For now, all she had to do was read her words:
Tweet it as it is: The moon is brighter than the sun; Toledo, Ohio's night life is more vibrant than Manhattan's. Ezra Pound's "In the Station of the Metro" contains more words in it than the Holy Bible, Quran, Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads and Veda Combined.
Maybe she would tweet it after all. Maybe she wouldn't. Perhaps no one would get it. After the poll-defying election, there simply didn't seem to be an objective reality anymore. Why should she hold onto one?
As there wasn't much she could do about that, Nora continued to stare out the window of the historic hotel that had become her home for a season. To the right of the abandoned dairy store was an even drabber Kim's Import Plus, a corrugated metal building, also painted white, with four evenly spaced barred windows. The lights were still on, and a blue scene of wide isles and sparsely covered metal shelving systems was visible inside. Apparently Kim was having problems finding the Bikes, Strollers, Bags, Packs, Pictures, Stereos, Speakers, Gifts, Toys and Novelties advertised on two signs the same dimensions of the windows and mounted above in the red corrugated metal trim at the top of the building. It was all too orderly and minimal, especially for an import shop. Nora pictured Monk from the TV series in there manning the counter, refusing a bargain shipment from Taiwan while Kim was gone. "This is junk. We can't take that. Do you have any colored plexi-glass boxes that fit neatly inside one another? Those would look great centered alone on this long shelf over here."
Nora also stared at the grid of numbers on her spread sheet. It was not so sparse, though it too was ordered rather neatly. Yet, it was colorful. She liked color on her Excel tables, and not just for clarity. If one had to stare at data on and off all day, it might as well look pretty. Still, the raw data no matter how nicely presented had led her to the wrong place, and it glared at her, laughing. As she closed the file disgusted, she could hear a Jake brake on a semi in the distance over the slow steady stream of traffic on 66.
She stared out the window again. Beyond the Quality Dairy was the railroad tracks, the wash, and then Interstate 40. As it was almost exactly parallel to her, with a light twist of her head, she could see headlights in both directions; the headlight/tail light scenario would switch as she rotated her head one direction and then the next. For a couple of minutes she just moved her head back and forth like an old typewriter carriage. She even threw in an auditory "Ding" for the hell of it. Her grandma had one of those in the back room at the trading post. She and her cousins would mess around with it. They never typed anything. They just put paper in and pushed the keys, aaaaaaaaassssssssssdddddddfffff, etc until the roller moved all the way over and they heard "Ding."
She closed the Excel file and opened a blank Word document. She wasn't sure why. She just couldn't go over all the different poll numbers anymore. It was time to accept somehow pollsters all across the country had failed. Her numbers for the Navajo Nation and other reservations matched election results fairly closely, but that wasn't enough. She wanted to figure out what went wrong as a whole. But she couldn't. The poll numbers were what they were. The election numbers were what they were. The only problem is that they didn't match and looking at them wasn't going to change that. So, she closed Excel and opened Word simply for something to do.
On her blank document she typed one line:
Tweet it as it is:
She had no plan of tweeting this. It just came to her. She thought she could perhaps watch TV instead. But she didn't want to.
Not bad, she thought. Anything is better than numbers, numbers that lie--just like this weather. She typed some more:
The moon is brighter than the sun; Toledo, Ohio's night life is more vibrant than Manhattan's.
This was fun. She could go on, lie after lie, stated as fact. She bit her lower lip, which was her habit when thinking hard. She knew that because the list could go on, she needed something singular, something odd, an outlier.
Ezra Pound's "In the Station of the Metro" contains more words in it than the Holy Bible, Quran, Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads and Veda Combined.
Ha! She was delighted. For a few minutes anyway. Eventually there was facing being alone in Gallup, New Mexico on New Year's Eve, but she didn't need to do that yet.
For now, all she had to do was read her words:
Tweet it as it is: The moon is brighter than the sun; Toledo, Ohio's night life is more vibrant than Manhattan's. Ezra Pound's "In the Station of the Metro" contains more words in it than the Holy Bible, Quran, Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads and Veda Combined.
Maybe she would tweet it after all. Maybe she wouldn't. Perhaps no one would get it. After the poll-defying election, there simply didn't seem to be an objective reality anymore. Why should she hold onto one?
Monday, February 5, 2018
2017: The Year the Middle Drawer of North America Fell Out of Reality and Hit the Floor of the Impossible
2017 was the year the middle drawer of North America fell out of reality and hit the floor of the impossible so hard that all firm-minded pollsters, statisticians, sociologists, meteorologists, climatologists, journalists, economic forecasters and political annalists across the country bounced out and rolled away across the Trumpedelic plains, confronted as they spun in circles and rolled head over foot, glassy-eyed before a universe not held together by the laws of physics but instead stitched together with Tweets. Even poets, mystics, prophets, fortune-tellers and that one crazy man down on 6th Avenue holding the cardboard sign reading "The End Has Come" were mystified. Only A.M. talk-radio listeners and Fox-news sponges clung safely to the American drawer, now splayed open like an inverted calf hooked to an air compressor.
This was no small matter.
A tiny planet orbiting a minimal star on the outer fringes of one out of one hundred billion galaxies would never be the same. Every particle of reason on that tiny speck of existence knew something had forever changed and had no idea what to do about it. It was as if your intestine climbed up through your throat and began devouring your face. Would you still plan on getting up in the morning for a cup of coffee and the long commute? Well, that's exactly what we did--which, in a way, was as unreal as anything.
This was no small matter.
A tiny planet orbiting a minimal star on the outer fringes of one out of one hundred billion galaxies would never be the same. Every particle of reason on that tiny speck of existence knew something had forever changed and had no idea what to do about it. It was as if your intestine climbed up through your throat and began devouring your face. Would you still plan on getting up in the morning for a cup of coffee and the long commute? Well, that's exactly what we did--which, in a way, was as unreal as anything.
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