If You Fall, You fall Alone

There is a road,

no simple highway

between the dawn and the dark of night.

And if you go, no one may follow.

That path is for your steps alone

Lately I have been thinking about how time passes at different rates during life. Of course, it depends on what you are doing. An hour spent with a beautiful woman can be over in a few minutes. On the other hand, sharing an elevator with an insurance salesman can seem like an eternity.

We just took a plane ride from Auckland where I was forced to sit in the middle seat next to a fat lady who just took a cruise with a bunch of friends. She told me all about it for 14 hours. I never knew cruises could be so damn interesting.

When the meal came, I wanted to kill myself with the plastic fork.

Anyway, looking at how the time goes in our lives, it's like a man jumping off a very tall building. The way our son, Josh, explains it, speed actually increases as he falls until something called Terminal Velocity is reached.

Nice term.

So when we are born, we jump off the building and seem to actually float for a while. We enjoy the entire experience and don't pay a lot of attention to what is really happening. If we bother to look down, all we see are friendly, fluffy, white clouds.

It takes quite a bit of time to realize that the years seems to be passing by faster than they used to.

"Yipee! Summer vacation! Where's my bike?" "Wasn't it just yesterday that I went to the Senior Prom with what's-her-name?""Didn't you kid just have a Bar Mitzvah? Oh, it was a wedding? He's divorced? No kidding?""Who's that old man in the mirror?"

"What the hell is that down there? Is that a SIDEWALK???? WhoputTHATthere?"Ohhhh,SHITTTTTTT!!!!"

I am glancing down watching my father just inches from the ground. If he has the time to look up he will see a baby girl, his great-granddaughter, about to float from the top of the building. She will never know him or see him.

She doesn't even know there's a sidewalk.