Time
Pink Floyd (Mason, Waters, Wright, Gilmour)
Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way.
Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain.
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.
So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it’s sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you’re older,
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.
Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time.
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over,
Thought I’d something more to say.
I went shopping today to get a few bits and pieces, including a new calendar and diary. Barely into November and things are already cropping up for next year. It’s not like they’re bad things. For example, I need to jot down a date in January when a piece of flash fiction of mine will be published in an online zine. Also, Halinka and I are planning a trip back to Europe for mid-next year. But man, you do notice the time flying by.
I suppose part of the melancholy about all this for me is that next year is fairly significant. Let’s just say I was born in 1970 and you can do the maths. I’m actually okay about it – to be honest, life is better than it’s ever been. I miss my family terribly and would give pretty much anything to have them back, but otherwise life is good.
It’s just hard to believe that it’s 2010 next year. Seriously, people, where the fuck are the flying cars? And don’t even get me started on manned missions to Mars. Clarke was talking about return missions to Jupiter by 2010.
Then again, who am I to talk, going out and buying paper calendars and diaries? I always try to use my iPhone calendar and sync it online and stuff like that, but the simple truth is that I like to jot things down in a diary. It’s a real book and I have all my old diaries that I thumb through once in a while when I’m passing the bookshelf in my study. Nostalgia can be cool. And a calendar hanging on the wall is useful – you note something down while you’re on the phone, Halinka and I can both stand in front of it and figure out dates for stuff and things like that.
However, my paper time-keeping idiosyncrasies notwithstanding, it’s a simple fact that we’re all way behind on the whole advancement of the human race thing. On the one hand I look at my iPhone and rejoice at how cool the future is. On the other, I look at the complete lack of a moon base, manned missions to Mars and the bewildering absence of flying cars and I can only think, Humanity: Your finger – Pull it out!
.
On the other hand, you actually can book a space vacation now. Not quite as exciting as a return trip to Jupiter though. I think we, as a people, have turned inward and lowered our expectations. Sad. The visionaries are still out there, but they have a hard time being heard over the bean counters.
~jon
You got that right. Imagine spending the defence budget on space exploration.
*sigh*