life in the Air Age

[gurdonark]

"My world is not like yours--I come from some place long ago.
Now there's no way back. I'm lost and I feel so alone"--Bill Nelson

I find myself drawn to songs and books which focus on the notion that one lives in the wrong time. One is not a geek or misfit--one is merely misplaced. The time machine landed just outside the delivery room, and the stork plopped the package down hundreds of years from home.

Sometimes when I go through airports these days (and I seem to have reacquired my keen airport-sense), I see kids who are radiant, with clunky glasses and curious clothing. They make me realize that kids dismissed as nerdy when I was a kid were in fact merely misplaced style-setters. It's time travel--that look isn't dorkish--it's fashionable.

It's a convenient fiction, this being misplaced, enjoyed by many. People pine away for the eras of good music, free love, courtly manners, or simple decorum. Never mind that the penicillin was still seen only as bread mold. Never mind that millions of people worked long hours tilling fields to make sure a privileged few lived well.

But I think that the truly frightening notion of time travel is the idea that I was born into exactly my time, that these contradictions and absurdities are my contradictions and absurdities. I'm Morlock and Eloi all at once. This curious theorem holds that I am misfit because it is my time to be misfit, my shortcomings are my own, to be improved upon or borne with, and that I am not, in fact, a misplaced cavalier or salt marcher. What if the time machine was set exactly to this point, and my destiny was to live in the present in which I actually live? How would I cope then? What if I'm "supposed" to be here, and now, and these are not limitations--these are the challenges in my quest? What if I define the quest myself, without even destiny waiting to play a hand? What if I am where I am, and this is what it is,
and my time is now?

I must ponder how this will affect my world view, because I was so comforted that I was just in the wrong time, and the machine just needed a bit of tuning.

Comments

Finney

[seraphimsigrist.livejournal.com]

Do you know the Jack Finney book
Time and Again ? I remember
enjoying that as a time travel cum
return to an earlier time(in this
case 19th century New York which he
describes with great gusto). the
sequel some years later I found
much less satisfactory...+S.

[ghostsandrobots.livejournal.com]

Or how about if the time machine deliberately dropped you off in the wrong time? Well, that's probably not as beneficial a way to look at it.

What if I'm "supposed" to be here, and now, and these are not limitations--these are the challenges in my quest? What if I define the quest myself, without even destiny waiting to play a hand?

Sometimes I think along similar lines, oddly enough when my limitations seem at their most overwhelming. Actually, it helps.

Very interesting read as always.

[myasma.livejournal.com]

I dug out the only Be Bop Deluxe album I own (Axe Victim)after I saw this, and took it for a spin. Still sounds great!

[milly-bogtrot.livejournal.com]

I feel this way a lot. But I like to think that I feel 'misplaced' because I've been born in numerous times, and some feel more like home to me maybe because I spent more time there and learnt more. I find this a more positive way to think about it. Maybe in another life I'll feel a yearning for 2003 (who knows?).

It also depends on your belief in 'time' and its nature. One theory is that time is all at once, all the time, and not linear..in which case what we are feeling is actually the 'oneness' of all times.

Ok, I'm rambling I think.
=o]

Re: Finney

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

It's curious--I think I read the Finney one about the afterlife that was later, and I've seen large snippets of the movie, but I've never read the book nor see the entire movie, though I always mean to do so.

I'll have to pick it up, as I always meant to read it.

malevolent time machines

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I'm just grateful they had Pop Tarts and space food sticks during my childhood--what if the machine had dropped me into a time with only salt pork and hard tack?

the radio was singing love songs

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I love "Axe Victim". The two songs "Adventures in a Yorkshire Landscape" and "Jets at Dawn", back to back, almost sum up everything I love about rock music.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

If I've been reborn over and over, I'm eager to see what the stars look like when some future self goes starfaring.

[milly-bogtrot.livejournal.com]

Maybe he already has!
(if I think too hard about all this it makes my head hurt)

[jackiemae.livejournal.com]

I've always thought that I would rather be in the self-sufficiency if the 19th century. Those were simple yet hard-working days...a time when people appreciated what they had. It was a strong family time when every one had important chores to do and no passive entertainment. Wouldn't it be nice if we could take what was good in all times and make a new society? It would be honest and hard-working, peaceful and caring, and tolerant (has tolerance ever existed?). It would be good for the environment; there would be no huge, belching industries. I would have a difficult time without the instant communication and knowledge of this era. How might you design a new society?

[thecatinside.livejournal.com]

That sounds good to me.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

I like reading about the folks who settled the great plains.
What times! But I also like the turn of the century, when people built libraries and made their schools work right and generally did things.