Dear Dr. Gaines,
We can't go on meeting like this via email and in the hallowed halls of Kaiserdom! Actually I hang out in lobbies for art's sake. Some of my colleagues (the art, not themselves) are hanging on the walls. Great gallery space!
Inside the MRI, the experience was odd & acoustically interesting. All that knocking, if you're a poltergeist, a woodpecker, or a jackhammer's dream, that is. You can feel the microwave pulses. The technician was a bit dull; didn't know how the machine worked, didn't even care. Said: “I just push the buttons.” How could anyone NOT care about the electro-magnetic spectrum? I didn't even bother to ask to see the images.
But I did envision images of my shoulder sailing past Alpha Centauri along with the ghostly pulse traces of myriad coffee cups heated in microwaves across America, and original episodes of The Honeymooners and I Love Lucy... Jack Benny's ugly mug, and the Beatles' debut on The Ed Sullivan Show with all those bad TV commercials ricocheting through space and time.
How we measure time is relative to planetal orbit. What's a mere half-century of earth time to the speed of light? or sound? So I'm orbiting 40-something in earth years. Jovian or Venusian reckoning automatically makes one older or younger. It depends on which perspective one chooses to wear.
Inside the MRi machine is like a cybercoffin, or a smali rocket with air conditioning and disco lights. I thought of HAL's hapless charges in suspended animation: 2001 is nearly upon us! I thought of Capt. Kirk saying “Ha ha, very funny, Scotty. Now, beam up my clothes.” And Carl Sagan droning on and on and on about “Billions and billions of stars...”
Inside the MRi machine is like a cybercoffin, or a smali rocket with air conditioning and disco lights. I thought of HAL's hapless charges in suspended animation: 2001 is nearly upon us! I thought of Capt. Kirk saying “Ha ha, very funny, Scotty. Now, beam up my clothes.” And Carl Sagan droning on and on and on about “Billions and billions of stars...”
Images of SETI forlornly sweeping the skies in the distance, for some trace of life long after we're gone from the face of this earth, perhaps picking up doppleganger traces of Orson Welles' War of the Worlds, and the stardust remains of Timothy Leary... who else was shot into space? Arthur C. Clark's ashes (not Angela's)?
Imagine extraterrestrial beings some time from now in another dimension receiving all that junk mail. Bizarre remnants of what we politely call culture.
Did you envision living to the end of the century, and the end of the millenium? I was in 5th grade, Lagunitas School, much like on a day like today, time telescoping back and forth with no sense of linear direction. Einstein folding the map of the universe into the pockets of his brain, poor brain that could envision the relativity of time and space continuum...but forget simple math, it was kept in a jar by the door in some lab. I envision time as a möbius strip teaser. We find ourselves coming and going at the same time. But I digress...
Imagine extraterrestrial beings some time from now in another dimension receiving all that junk mail. Bizarre remnants of what we politely call culture.
Did you envision living to the end of the century, and the end of the millenium? I was in 5th grade, Lagunitas School, much like on a day like today, time telescoping back and forth with no sense of linear direction. Einstein folding the map of the universe into the pockets of his brain, poor brain that could envision the relativity of time and space continuum...but forget simple math, it was kept in a jar by the door in some lab. I envision time as a möbius strip teaser. We find ourselves coming and going at the same time. But I digress...
