live live backwards

live live backwards

fiction
edward w pritchard

It would be so much the better if life were experienced backwards. At least experiencing life backward would prepare some of us to better understand how to survive the World we find ourselves in.

Not as in " The curious case of Benjamin Button" by Fritzgerald where we go from old to young month to month in our conscious and physical confrontation with the World-again re experiencing our teenage revelries, careless days of youth and getting stronger month to month,

but more like in "Ward 6" by Russian writer Anton Chekhof.

The Russians, like the writer  Chekhof, have a much more dismal reaction to their external world because of the cold, because of what fifteen days of sub zero weather can do to a man when he is old. In a world when it is always dark, when one only exists to serve the State economically and where one must make the necessary psychological adjustments to stark reality to survive a little longer what else can one wish for than a glimmer of understanding of  what does it all mean?

F. Scott Fitzgerald a good writer, Anton Chekhof a great writer.

One life closely examined has a certain banality about it. Time to put on the coat of a new philosophy to adjust myself to my World.

Meanwhile here and now the cold snap has ended. It will be spring again in two months and two weeks. I have significant things to do this week.

I must plan and implement a birthday gift for my Grandson's significant second birthday.

First though I have important duties in babysitting to share with the Boy, my only grandson.

I don't have time to listen for the loud exploding impact of trillions of interactions of atoms of cause and effect swirling about me.

Eyes properly down trodden I trudge forward. It feels warmer. Two months and two days to Spring renewal.

Deja vu again this year.