Children of the Lost Gen

“…Time is a tyrant, a menace that spares not one … Time becomes little more than a question of what? What is time? Modern thought is based on this question of time. And from an inquiry of time has gone a question of the nature of time. In modern literature, the thought of time has spawned from the works of St. Augustine, Joyce, Woolf, Kafka, Mann, Eliot, Sartre, Proust, Conrad, James, and Faulkner. Each writer chose to explore time and problems relating to time.”

Stolen from the hidden files of D$

In our time, it’s safe to expect the days will grow longer before they grow shorter. Or is it the other way around?

Whatever circular method you may choose, last week was a pleasant and delectable Movable Feast when all things were wonderful, just wonderful, and the smallest details unveiled great insight. With no better preparation than that, this week welcomed a reluctant realization that the Sun Also Rises on every corner of this earth. A slow and plodding realization, more like a very long letter home rather than a brisk read of current conditions and perhaps if Lady Ashley had only disciplined herself more, somehow found a way to keep her witty little mouth shut every now and then, things would have turned out completely different.

Unlike most other chains of events studied under modern man’s stern microscope, Hemingway’s unusual life is best reflected in reverse order. It’s laughable to suggest that the first chapter, written decades before, could even begin to approach the weight of those that came later. To understand a man and his lost generation, it seems, the last chapter always comes first. The wise reader must start the reading with his death.

That way certainly eliminates the guess work and saves a considerable amount of time.

Using every predictable device known to our literary detective, it’s clear now that the puddled mass of warm wax on the dinner table once proudly stood in the form of a long and slender candle. Measuring its current temperature, it is believed that this brilliant object exhausted its energy not that long ago. We can really only imagine how that flame once flickered, shedding its uneven light unto the consuming dark, waving stubbornly between warm romance and cold rejection.

Now, as to when it all began, it might be easy to conclude that an unknown hand simply struck a match and touched a fire to the wick, igniting a predetermined and unpreventable flow of events. But that simple deduction would overlook the complex fact that the candle and the match needed to be manufactured from a steady supply of natural and man-made resources. Somewhere along this line of evidence, beneficial desire forced the hand to select these tools for a reason. Without a doubt, the decision to light this candle occurred long before it ever burned.

And, obviously, such combustible materials should be handled carefully.

In my mind, these stories are just more lessons in the unpredictable nature of seemingly predictable events in a world where even “now” is truly not known. We are always a few moments from the real “now” while the blinding light bends its way toward our faces. It takes years of “now” to turn the page over to “then” but the process can appear almost instantaneous. Trust me, these words you are reading now were already read by you then even though you just began to comprehend them. Our understanding of a remote “then” is far more accurate than it is of any intimate “now”. Strangely, although it was impossible to know then what we know now, through the miracle of the mind we can still feel like we did. When that happens, a grand table is set and we find a delicious feast at the end of our wishes.

In terms of books of the dead, it seems “then” was an odd place where men and women once spoke in foreign tongues and basked in a luxurious sense of chaotic nowness. Forgettable characters were always remembered back then. Real bastards were given whole chapters, frighteningly dull conversation was spelled out to the letter and common public bus rides were worthy of ornate description.

Rather than the entire generation, only the expatriated slice of discarded royalty, whores and gold diggers ever rose to prominence. Georgette and Lady Ashley were only distinguishable by the color and deteriorating stage of their teeth.

Perhaps for the first time, time tended to stand still and any frail human responsibility to recognize it was cast aside. This new age then ushered in a new people who replaced time, wandered the hillsides in search of daytime gratification and lived their nights by the creed that the best time was only spent when one couldn’t remember where it went.

If Miss Stein had been more acutely aware, she would have noted in her concise way that this generation was not so much lost as it was merely following headlong in the path of its leader. If endless time flows, then it flows in both directions. As children of that generation and children of time, who are we to criticize that?

Now and then, we know there’s a lot to consider when sifting the scattered ashes of history. Sometimes, we may be distracted for a while and return to find that the flame extinguished itself, a hopeless wick bent and charred and buried, a tiny light which drowned itself in its own unforgiving fuel. That sad state is easily explainable as a helpless victim of the environment, a brief and subtle tribute to our candle maker’s skill; to our eyes, nothing miraculous there.

Other times, we may fall into a sound sleep and awake to be alerted to a more dramatic result. That cruel fire may rage for days on end. It may destroy our homes and cities and forests and weave its destructive path all the way to the nearest river. We can only hope that the river will be wide enough, its flow swift enough, that no fire will pass over it.

When an unthinking river forgives our mistakes and our distractions, then we can say that is truly a miracle.

We can casually say “He was a man of his times” and leave it at that, thinking we have no better way to explain the brutal yet healing aspects of time.

Yet these words fail to describe Time properly. No words meet the test of Time. Time is the strange universal glue that keeps the sun rising. We can enhance our vision of all known things but once we take the constant of Time out of the equation we are left with very little. We can’t think of defining the events of our lives, the speed with which we shuffle through them, or the energy we expend in such pursuit without a shallow guess of what Time may actually be.

The Sun Also Rises is the main course at the Moveable Feast and Time has a relentless appetite for all matter. If it is true that only opposites attract, then stubborn Time will continue to defy our explanation because it is the exact opposite of everything we know under that Sun.

But we can detect from the remnants of a fast life violently consumed by Time, from the small drops of dried pieces left here and there on the diner table, Hemingway’s particular flame must have given off one hell of a light. And we can rest assured, judging by what we know now of our past, that one day Time will come asking for another sacrificial meal, a brilliant flash of equal if not greater significance.

Cheers,

Mb