"We take turns, one day the fool and some days the fortunate child, …"

We live in extraordinary times, or so the media insists. Who among us could resist reporting that seems to so solidly confirm just how special we must be to live in such extraordinary times? The old hometown team won the World Championship for the first time in ninety-six years. "We" set several low-temperature-for-the-month records this week. Never before has "it" been so damned cold this early in the year. Surrounded by unlikely events, we don't have to pretend to be special anymore. Even acknowledging the obvious fact that several of these stats seem spurious,—I mean, who keeps track of all this crap?—nobody can deny that we seem to find ourselves living in truly extraordinary times; just like yesterday, just like last week, just like every day since time immemorial.

Every day brings another blue moon somewhere. Each sunrise brings its own OnceInA … experience. Never before and also never again will the innumerably million conditions combine in just that way; likewise every minute of every freaking day. To acknowledge this fact might well overwhelm even the most evolved among us, so we seem to filter our experiences with a tacit presumption that time repeats itself, replicating events over and over and over again, some iterations obviously better than others and some truly extraordinary-seeming. Never before and never again, as if for that one iteration, we let our filter down to see how things really occur. We usually hold a tenacious belief in the inescapable existence of such a thing as Ordinary Time, when time, moving ever onward, might only actually come in extraordinary forms. No do-overs. No repeats. No real belly-flops. Only just uniquely whatever it is.

I cheered when the hometown team won. In a moment they went from aspiring champions to defending ones, though that team will never again take to another stadium to play. The next regular season game they play will be engaged in by a championship team in name only, a few veterans retired out and a few fresh-faced rookies hired in. Between the team that won the championship ninety-six years ago and the one today, not even the name remained the same. The old stadiums went to rust then dust, not even the city they say they represent remains recognizable from then. The comparisons can be more than a fair stretch and still seem to perfectly mesh with our characterizations. Our team has now won two world championships, though nothing between the two instances remained even a little bit the same. We might easily recognize that the two disparate teams didn't even play the same game.

We do not actually go around and around and around. We've found solace and refuge in deluding ourselves that we do. If we were responsible for getting by and carrying on in a world comprised of people poking sticks into unpredictable futures, our civilization might understandably crumble. We cling closely to our stuffed animal conventions, baby-talking ourselves forward. Some days, we seem especially blessed and other days just as especially cursed, but better or worse, we can usually glimpse a more promising turn coming our way. When we cannot, we justifiably turn all despondent and depressed, as if we'd been cheated out of a birthright. We take turns, one day the fool and some days the fortunate child, knowing for sure that as sure as this world keeps turning, our turn in the sunlight's coming our way. Oh, happy day!

©2019 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #GlancingKnow, #PureSchmaltz