Page 29 - WTP Vol. XIII #3

nothing but his heart in his head. He looked for nothing everywhere.
She wandered the streets,
alone and lost,
fog inside and out,
nothing but her hands in her pockets, nothing but her heart in her head. She looked for nothing everywhere.
They met.
Now they stroll through the streets together, clarity inside and out,
nothing but the world in their pockets, nothing but one another in their heads. They look for tomorrow together.
I had wanted to become an author. Now I wanted to become a French author, like Beckett, an Irishman who wrote in French.
I had fallen in love at first sight, like my parents said they did, for which I believed I was destined.
This was like an alternate life, not just glimpsed and hinted at, but lived. It was as if the train of my life had switched from one track to another.
But her letters came less and less frequently, then stopped. My train switched back to the original track.
Perception of Time
When my memory plays tricks on me, often the issue relates to time — the order of events and their dura- tion. My perception of time varies with my emotional involvement in what is happening, as well as with my age. Time drags for a child and races ahead for someone as old as me. The final moments of a sport- ing event can remind us of the variability of time.
Because of rules that stop the clock, the last two min- utes of a football game or a basketball game can go on and on, with reversal after reversal. I particularly remember the Harvard-Yale game of 1968.
It was the last game of the season, and both Harvard and Yale were undefeated. But Yale had Brian Dowl- ing at quarterback and Calvin Hill, a future star for the Dallas Cowboys, at halfback. Undergraduate Gary Trudeau had made them two epic heroes in his Bull Tales comic strip in The Yale Daily News. We were sure to overwhelm our arch rivals.
At one point Yale led 22–0. And with 42 seconds
remaining, they led 29–13. Then in a series of impos- sible flukes, Harvard scored 16 points. The headline in the Harvard Crimson the next day read “Harvard Beats Yale 29–29.”
(42 seconds? In The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, that number is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.)
A 2008 documentary brings that game to life, with actor Tommy Lee Jones, who played for Harvard in that game, as himself. That movie is now available streaming on YouTube. Search for “Harvard Beats Yale 29-29.”
Having endured the agony of that game (from the Yale side), my perception of time has been skewed ever since. And that distortion has been reinforced repeat- edly since then by last-minute changes of fortune in critical football and basketball games. Now I see that as a good thing.
Our lives are limited. X years and it’s over. But those years are made up of minutes, and minutes can mi- raculously expand during trauma as well as closely fought games.
I’m reminded of the race between Achilles and the tortoise, as told by the Greek philosopher Zeno. The tortoise gets a head start. Then, with a single step, Achilles covers half the distance between them. Then with every step, he cuts the distance in half again, but he never catches up with the tortoise, never passes it.
Death might be like that. In your consciousness, time expands — a minute feels like an hour, a second like a year, a nanosecond an eternity. It might be an end point you approach but never reach, as time, for you, expands.
The final minute of a Super Bowl game is a harbinger of that kind of immortality.
No wonder we become addicted to time-limited sports.
Excerpted from the book One Family, published Dec. 2024.
Author of two dozen books, Seltzer has been editor, novelist, Russian translator, parttime spy, Internet evangelist, and ebook entrepreneur. He’s published children’s fantasies, historical novels, and pioneering books about how to do business on the Internet. His latest book, In Flux, puts AI into context and suggests how we can nudge the future toward either serving us or oppressing us. He earned his BA and graduate degree from Yale University.
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