“We’re late!” Urania squawked.
“Perhaps,” Thalia replied. “It depends on how you are measuring time. Fools rush in.”
“What does that mean?” Urania looked at the wall clock and tapped her foot.
“Typist read a snippet of a novel that set her mind to spinning like a smart car’s wheels in a snowbank. She needed to pause and re-center,” said Tal.
“What book? What’d she read?” asked the Muse of Many Questions.
“That’s why we’re late… if we look at elapsed time. Typist needed more ticks of the clock to ponder. She’s decided it’s unwise to share the book’s title until she’s read more. She’s working with a timespan of discretion. Snap judgements on snippets is folly — like yelling fire in a theater when popcorn oil is smoking,” Tal answered. “Until we read the book, we’ll say no more about it. So often people rush into things with the shallowest of understanding.”
“Are we going to write some fiction then?” Urania nibbled at her thumbnail.
“Yes! Let’s do,” said Thalia.
As a sixth grader at Darlington elementary, Jack Frank figured he knew a lot. He was a big fish in a school of guppies. On a warm May afternoon, he gazed out the science room window onto the playground. Soon he’d be free of baby-sized desks and primary colored playground equipment. He could see the middle school that awaited his arrival across the baseball diamonds and soccer fields.
Mr. Lium was standing in front of the classroom’s “smart” board telling a story about the power in a butterfly’s wings. Some scientist once said the simple flap of an insect’s wings could affect weather patterns on the other side of earth. His fellow scientists scoffed at the suggestion until a few decades later some physicists proved it was true. Blah, blah, blah… is what Jack heard until Mr. Lium said something about a guy named Norman something or other. Norman was from Iowa, just like Jack’s grandparents. And… Norman worked to produce high-yield crops that fed people who might otherwise starve.
This information by itself might have skipped right through Jack’s brain like a flat stone on calm water, but… last night at dinner, Jack’s mother had been fretting about the news and its never-ending coverage of the pandemic. Jack’s dad said, “There are too many damn people on this planet already. God’s way of thinning the herd. We keep figuring out how to keep people alive and the earth’s resources keep dwindling.”
Jack struggled with the contradiction. Is keeping more people alive good or bad? he wondered. Was this guy Norman a good guy? Or, a bad guy?
Mr. Lium dropped his cowbell on the floor. He’d learned as a young teacher that noise got attention. Jack snapped out of his thought pattern and heard Mr. Lium’s wrap up of the day’s lesson. “So you see, humans create and observe, create and observe… That’s the way of evolution. Sometimes we have to create our way out of our own mistakes.”
What would the creation be like if every person decided to "leave the place in a better state than they found it? Would this led to problem prevention rather than be necessary to problem solving?
What if we believed that no one gets to take more than they give back? What would be different if Emerson's vision was our reality?
"To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded."
I’m working on knowing Time a bit better. He is weird, sometimes so unpredictable, sometimes knowing him by the minute. Then I’ve got your post. Thanks. And thanks for the link. So happy to see your fiction book “growing” 💕