Man & Time, J.B. Priestley

By Craig: I have recently been reading an old book by the mid twentieth century writer J.B. Priestley called Man and Time. In the first chapter there is an old 19th century illustration that was borrowed from The Ingoldsby Legends. It depicts a man being chased by a grandfather clock with legs and arms. His hat has blown off of his head as he flees down a hill from this thing that seems almost certain to catch him. The look on the man's face is one of sheer terror. For the most part we are all running from time. This old illustration sums up the unambiguous future that we will all one day face. We will all one day cease to be.

Most people seek a sort of permanence in their lives. It is a comfort zone of sorts that we strive for, although it varies with the nature of the individual. We get use to functioning in a sort of rhythm that becomes a part of who we are. Most of us wake up and immediately start performing the same ritual that we have become accustomed to day after day. The permanence, however, which is sought...can never be attained. Outside influences along with slight deviations in our game plan coupled with the passage of time render this nirvana impossible. We are always looking behind us...and ahead of us, and there it lurks...that grandfather clock ticking away the seconds that will eventually make all thought and actions moot and pointless.   

Bruce Jenner's Face

By Craig: Sometime during the summer of 1976 I can remember sitting in my parents living room watching the Olympics on a small black and white television. The Olympics were held in Montreal that year, and because I was only eight years old it was my first memory of them. I was only four when the Munich Olympics were held in 1972 so I have no memory of those events. I do remember thinking that four years was a very, very, very long time. Indeed, to an eight year old it may as well have been another lifetime. As far as my eight year old self was concerned the Montreal Olympics were the first games that were ever held. There was the 13 year old Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci who won three gold medals. Then there was the American Sugar Ray Leonard who won a gold medal in boxing. However, it was the American Decathlon champion Bruce Jenner who stole the limelight. In the months following the Olympics he was everywhere. The news outlets of the day couldn't get enough of him. He was on the cover of magazines that had nothing to do with Track and Field. There was a Decathlon board game sporting his likeness. He even ended up at my breakfast table. His manly image with his long hair and powerful physique seeming to burst forth from the orange Wheaties box on the kitchen table. "Here I am Craig! Eat Wheaties! You can be a badass just like me! He was ubiquitous. His face everywhere.






Sometime during those Olympics as we sat in the living room, perhaps while watching Jenner throw a discus into the heavens, we heard a faint scratching sound on the screen door coming from outside. Investigating, we found a cat sitting there and when we opened the door it merely bounded into the house as if it lived there. The cat took an instant liking to my mother, and if anyone else tried to give it any attention they might get a scratch from its paw. It had a feral side to it and would sometimes leave the house for days and even weeks before returning, but it would always return. Then, one day in 1979 we moved from the house where we had watched the Montreal Olympics, and the cat went with us. It became immediately apparent that the cat did not like its new dwelling and within a few days it disappeared. A few weeks later we were shocked to get a call from our former neighbor saying that the cat had found its way back to our old residence which happened to be miles away across town. The cat, like most people was averse to change. It had become comfortable with its surroundings and when moved decided that it could not abide the change. We humans, like cats, also abhor change. We tend to stick to things that are familiar to us. A few years ago my son graduated from first grade and had a party on his last day of school. That evening  I found him crying on his bed and when I asked him what he was crying for he told me that he did not want to go into second grade, he wanted to go back to first grade. I chuckled at this and told him that things constantly change in life. I could see him reflecting on what I was telling him, and he then made a remark that I will never forget until the day I die. He said "daddy, when I grow up and get a job, are you going to drive me to work and pick me up? I don't think I can drive a car." I laughed and assured him that I would drive him to work!




Change is constant. My son is now in fifth grade and no longer concerns himself with worrying whether I will one day have to drive him to work. The feral cat is long dead...its fate unknown. The 1976 Olympics are now 39 years in the past. Looking at old images from those games invoke old memories of a time that no longer is. The participants are all past middle age, and have gone on to other things in their lives. There have been nine games held since that summer when I was eight. Then there is the ghostly image of Bruce Jenner on the Wheaties box. His arms raised in triumph...The youthful, athletic portrait of the champion sprinting into an unknown future full of change as the wheels of time continue to roll...