Sustainability, Equity, Development

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SUSTAINABILITY, EQUITY, DEVELOPMENT

SOMETHING ELSE: Survival Is Not An Option

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - 1963

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SOMETHING ELSE - The Beginning: Introduction

1963

We have the frontier of outer space. We have the frontier of inner space. We have other frontiers.
Unknown Navigator

The past is not dead. In fact, it's not even past.
William Faulkner (1897 - 1962)

The unexamined life is not worth living.
Socrates (469 - 399 B.C.)

I've looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
It's life's illusions I recall
I really don't know life at all.
Joni Mitchell (1943 - )

The infant became aware of himself seated in a high chair as a plate of macaroni was placed in front of him. He looked around the room. He was at the end of a table. Four women were seated at the table, and his mother was still walking around, providing people food and other items. To the left in a crib was his baby sister.

The people were huge, but his sister was very small, even smaller than him.

The women talked about him in the third person, "I didn't think he liked macaroni."
"Oh, he likes macaroni now, but he didn't used to."

He looked at the macaroni, and he knew to use the fork to lift it to his mouth. His mother was right. He did like it. He did not remember not liking it. In fact, in a curious psychological state, he didn't really remember anything, but that was okay.

His mother did something for the baby in the crib and then joined everyone at the table. Everyone started eating.

The infant watched the adults and ate. He did not speak. He wasn't speaking much yet, but he did plenty of looking around and thinking. One question kept emerging. The question occurred more as feeling than thought, a deep body sensation that would last the duration of his life. Only the words would change, and not by much.

What is THIS all about?

He faced certain death. Survival was not an option. The bizarre itch could not be scratched and would never change. In its context, whatever happened over the next thirty, fifty, or hundred years was incidental. At the moment he breathed his last breath, the itch would be there, now expressed, "What was THAT all about?"

Was indeed whatever happened between the two moments a tale told by an idiot?

Signifying what?

Nothing?

What else was there?

THE END