Tag: Time

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Time, by Ricky

“It’s about time.  It’s about space.  About two men in the strangest place.*. . .” 
Well, it’s about
time! 
Have you been
waiting a long time?  I’m sorry to have
kept you waiting, but the time got away from me.  Do you know where it went?
No I don’t, for
time waits for no one. 
Can I catch it
if I hurry? 
No.  Time marches on. 
But perhaps, if
I run? 
No.  Time also flies on wings of lightning so
don’t let it pass you by.
My minister once quoted God as
saying, “Time exists for the convenience of man.”  Personally, I find it inconvenient as I’m
often not on-time, sometimes I’m in-time, but never late for a timely meal. 
What is time anyway? 
I have heard that time is that property
of physics, which keeps everything from happening all at once.  If there were no time,
life would be short indeed.
A famous Air Force general
once told his staff, “Don’t worry, if you can’t get your work assignments
completed between 0800 and 1700, you can always finish them from 1700 to 0800.” 
It is said that “time is
money.”  I have very little money so I
guess that’s why I have no time.  If I
don’t have time to do something correctly the first time, how will I ever find
the time to do it over?  
Do you have the
time?
Not really.  I have two watches so I’m never sure what
time it is. 
Riddle me this: “Time flies, but you can’t.  They don’t travel in straight lines.” 
“Holy Mollie, Batman.” 
“Don’t swear
Robin.” 
Will the Dynamic
Duo solve that puzzle?  Tune in next
week; same bat time; same bat station. 
Well, it’s time to end our
show, so say goodnight, Gracie.
“Goodnight everyone.”
 
After all is said
and done, it’s still about time. 
Time’s up.
*To
hear the original TV theme song “It’s About Time” click on the link below.
http://www.televisiontunes.com/Its_About_Time_-_Version_1.html
© 20 May 2013 
About the Author 
I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale
and then in Redondo Beach.  Just prior to
turning 8 years old in 1956, I was sent to live with my grandparents on their
farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents
divorced.
When united with my mother and stepfather two years later
in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California,
graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966.  After three tours of duty with the Air Force,
I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until
her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11-2001
terrorist attack.
I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010.   I find writing these memories to be
therapeutic.
My story blog is, TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com.

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Time, by Lewis

Is there any cliché about
time that has yet gone unwritten or unspoken? 
I don’t feel comfortable making generalizations about the subject of
time.  I can only speak my own truths
about time, if I can figure out what they are.
People spend a lot of
money trying to mitigate the effects of time on their bodies.  They are usually rich, perhaps even as rich
as their plastic surgeons.  I don’t know
what a facelift costs.  I’m sure that it
depends upon a number of factors—the number of wrinkles per square inch of skin,
the number of square inches of skin per linear inch of one’s face, the elapsed
time since the previous facelift, the degree of satisfaction from the previous
facelift, the amount of time spent in the sun showing off one’s facelift, and
the percentage of body fat.
Also, I’m sure that, once
one has had a facelift, there is tremendous pressure to make some adjustments
to the birth date that appears on various personal documents.  It must be extremely embarrassing to be pulled
over for a traffic violation only to have the officer look at you, then your
driver’s license, and ask you step out of the car, put your hands on the roof,
and receive a pat down on suspicion of having a stolen ID.
What must a facelift do
to one’s relationship with a twin who cannot afford to follow suit?  Would they then introduce him or her as a
parent or much older sibling?  And what
of the spouse who now must endure the clucks and chuckles from those who assume
that he or she has “robbed the cradle”?  Upon death—still, I’m afraid an
inevitability—would it not feel unnatural to gaze upon the 90-year-old corpse
with skin stretched drum-tight across its chops and exclaim, “Oh, how natural
he/she looks?”  And, of course, the worst
message such shenanigans sends is that all the rest of us, the ones who choose
to age naturally, are growing uglier by the day. 
But I’m not buying
it.  I think of aging skin as a beauty
mark.  Nobody who’s into classic cars
would think of putting 2013 parts on a 1957 Chevrolet.  Sure, we might hammer out the dents,
straighten out the frame, fix the rust, replace the worn-out springs, and spray
a new coat of paint on her, but we would never try to make her look like this
year’s model.  I’m a 1946 model of a
white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant gay male who prefers to nuzzle the bumpers of
others like me and who doesn’t give a fig for brand-new sporty SUV’s with
programmable liftgates, reverse-view cameras, and touch screens.  I’ve been around the block with beloved
partners of both sexes, fathered two children, had a 30-year career that
provided a comfortable life, and I want to look the part.  I don’t want to pose for “before” and “after”
pictures where the “before” photo looks like an old picture of me after being
sucker punched in the mouth.  George
Bernard Shaw is quoted as saying, “Youth is wasted on the young.”  Yeah, and today youthfulness is wasted on the
old.
But the bitter old men of
Congress have found a way to exact their revenge.  They have saddled our youth with endless wars
that ravage their bodies in horrible ways but mollify themselves by providing
medical care that allows them to survive to live a full life in a condition
that no octogenarian would envy.  We load
the young up with student loan debt that makes the home loan of my generation
seem like chump change.  We trap them in
$9 an hour jobs with no hope of advancement so that they are actually making
less money at 35 than they were at 25. 
And, worst of all, we are handing off to them a world who atmosphere has
been poisoned to the point that their children almost surely will face a
lifetime of struggle for ever-dwindling resources.  We have made sure that, for them, growing old
is the most coveted luxury of all.
For those of us who have
lived free of ecological and demographic constraints on how we live our
lives—how many children we have; how big a house we build or live in; how many
vacation trips we take to how distant a destination; how we get to work, to
church, or the store; how we feel entitled to anything we can afford—it is time
to reimagine our lives in a new way. 
What truly makes us happy?  Where
does happiness happen?  What kind of
happiness do we want for those who come after? 
What is true?  How much time is
left before it’s too late?  We are threatened
not by growing old but by growing apart from what we know in our hearts is true
and that time is not on the side of the young and we are responsible.
© 19 May 2013 
About
the Author 
  
I came to the beautiful state
of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I
married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas
by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working
as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman
for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured
that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I
wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just
happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both
fortuitous and smooth.
Soon after, I retired and we
moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years
together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One
possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group
was there to light the way.
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Time by Will Stanton

“This thing all things devours:
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats high mountain down.”
So went Gollum’s riddle to
Bilbo.  Of course, the answer is “Time.”  Everything falls prey to time; nothing
lasts.  And, this includes humankind.  Our lives are but a mere speck in contrast
to, for example, geological time, although our lives usually are longer than
the fleeting moment allotted to a butterfly.
We usually have no inkling as to
how long our lives will be.  I always
have felt uncomfortable with the possibility that I may not have used my time
so productively as I might have, that I may have accomplished more to make me
truly worthy of this gift of time. 
Ironically, I currently spend a lot of time on these Story-Time
presentations.
In Thomas Mann’s acclaimed novella
“Death in Venice,” the protagonist Gustav von Aschenbach is shocked by a sudden
realization of mortality when he suffers a heart attack.  Afterwards as he watches the sands running
through a large hourglass, he muses, “The aperture through which the sand runs
is so tiny that, at first sight, it seems as if the level in the upper glass
never changes.  To our eyes, it appears
that the sand runs out …only at the end. 
And ‘til it does, its’ not worth thinking about ‘til the last moment
when there’s no more time…when there’s no more time to think about it.”     
Oh, I know that, in comparison, I
may have used my time more productively than many other people.  A lot of  people waste their lives in pursuit of hedonistic
pleasure or self-aggrandizement.   Or
worse, they throw away their lives through self-destructive behaviors or
destroy other people’s lives through mistreatment or violence.  Yet for even those of us who have had good
intentions, have we made the best use of our time?
I never have come to terms with
reality, always fantasizing that life and the world could be more ideal.  It may not be so, but it often appears that
the good die young, and the bad live on into old age. Why can’t those persons
throughout history who devoted their lives to helping others, to making the
world a better place, who had the talent to create great beauty in life, live
very long lives? 
Can you imagine a 20th-century
world without World War I, the Russian revolution and communism, World War II,
the Cold War?  What if Archduke Ferdinand
of the Austro-Hungarian Empire had not been assassinated at age of fifty and
had had time to continue his reformist influence that well may have defused the
tension between Serbia and the monarchy? 
There may have been no Great War, no millions of dead, no World War II,
not so much horror and sorrow.
Anyone who cares to learn the true
facts of history now knows through revelations from U.S. and former Soviet
Union officials that J.F.K. and Bobby, through back-channels, literally
prevented World War III and nuclear holocaust. 
What if John F. Kennedy had not been shot at age 47 and, instead, had
time to carry out his plans to withdraw our troops from Vietnam and to continue
to counter, as best he could, the military-industrial complex that President
Eisenhower had warned against?  Could he
have prevented thousands of U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of foreign civilians
from dying?  Could he have prevented the
waste of trillions of dollars?  We only
can speculate, for he did not have enough time with us.  Neither did Bobby.
What if Martin Luther King, who
died at 39, had had time to continue his message of non-violence, equal rights
for all, economic balance among all citizens? 
We might not have had the riots and blazing neighborhoods that followed
his assassination.  He might have helped
to avert the rapid back-slide into political discrimination and the
disproportionate domination of wealth by so few.  His concern was for more than just the Blacks
of the nation but rather for all.  But,
his time was cut short.
Then in early history, there was
Giordano Bruno in the 16th century who, through his scientific observations,
saw for himself that our sun is a star, just like many other stars in the
heavens; and he expressed the opinion that we are not alone in the universe,
that there are many worlds far beyond. 
What other scientific revelations would he have found had the Church not
burned him at the stake in 1600 at age fifty-two?  He should have lived a long life.
There also have been many creative
individuals such as the young physicist Henry Moseley whose scientific theories
were so brilliant that he was assumed to be destined to win the Nobel Prize had
he not been killed in action at Gallipoli in World War I.  Why couldn’t someone like that have more time?
Music historians claim that Mozart
was the greatest musical genius of all times. 
The beauty of his creations continues to enhance the lives of those of
us who choose to listen.  What great
works could he have written had ne not died of rheumatic fever at age thirty-five?  Wasn’t he entitled to a life at least as long
as some evil person such as Mafia don Joseph Bonano?
And, what about the young and
innocent such as Ryan White who received a tainted blood transfusion and died
of AIDS at eighteen, or Martin Richard, the little eight-year-old boy who
recently was blown to bits in a terrorist bombing in Boston?  Ironically, one of the last photos of him
showed him holding a sign that he had made that said, “No more hurting
people.”  If they had lived full lives,
what contributions might they have made to the world?
If people must meet untimely
deaths, why not the evil and destructive people of the world instead, those terrible
individuals who harm others, destroy the planet, those who lie, cheat, and
steal?  There are far too many of those.  Had their time been extremely short, what
horrors could have been avoided?   
What if Adolf Hitler had died
young of syphilis in Munich, or Josef Stalin had died early so that his
paranoid evil had no chance of infecting Russia and the world?  How much more wonderful the world might have
been without the Hitler’s Holocaust, Stalin’s genocides, “Bomber” Harris’ order
to fire-bomb peaceful Dresden.
And frankly said, what about the
possibility of an apparently sociopathic vice-president succumbing to his first
heart attack instead of mechanically being kept alive like Darth Vader?  What if he, along with all of his nefarious
political manipulators and financial supporters, had perished from the earth
early on?  Might the President whom the
people actually chose have had a chance to serve his two terms rather than a cadre
of misguided ideologues who wreaked endless political and financial havoc upon
the nation and the world?  How different
would the world be today?  If that time
had been allotted to other people who were motivated to do good, what a
different world we would live in today.
Ironically in recent years, that
realization has come to a couple of Supreme Court Justices.  They quietly have lamented to friends that,
in retrospect, they now realize that the Supreme Court broke with all legal
precedence, terminating a presidential vote-count, an action that subsequently
was found to have put the wrong men into office and consequently unleashed
unforeseen events that have caused great hardship and sorrow to the nation and
the world.
None of us in this room is either
J.F.K. nor Stalin, neither Mozart nor Darth Vader.  So, what do we make of our lives?  All that each of us can do is to take the
time remaining for us and do the best we can. 
Be positive and creative, be honest and loyal, treat each other well,
love each other.  And, enjoy the company
of those who feel as we do.  Live well,
for time is short.  Eventually, this
thing, time, all things devours.

© 2 April
20013

About the Author


I have had a life-long fascination with people and their life
stories.  I also realize that, although
my own life has not brought me particular fame or fortune, I too have had some
noteworthy experiences and, at times, unusual ones.  Since I joined this Story Time group, I have
derived pleasure and satisfaction participating in the group.  I do put some thought and effort into my
stories, and I hope that you find them interesting.
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Time by Michael King

As we all know time is the measured sequential relationship of the movement of objects in relation to one another or as we experience time it is the experiential intensity of intellectual and/or emotional focus. In actuality there is only the present but at this stage of our experience we exist in the universes of time and space. When we do experience being in the present, our abilities to more fully grasps our beingness increases.

I never was a fan of George Burns, however his comment that “You can’t help getting older, but you don’t have to get old,” is perhaps one of the better statements about our choosing to experience time.

One of my ideas of how I might relate to time is to recognize that each generation has a different socio-political environment. The various stages of the industrial developmental era has transitioned into the technological- communications era which is especially challenging to my age group. Time is experienced in the influence of technological nanoseconds, slow computers, texting, on line bill paying, rush hour, TV dinners or impersonal fast food consumption and when to take our high blood pressure pills. The social environment changes and along with it changes how we perceive time.

Many like me prefer to avoid the latest gadgets that hit the market, being glued to our cell phones, texting worthless messages and paying high prices to be up to the minute with the latest fad. I don’t want to take the time to keep up. I’m retired and want to sit back and relax, do something old fashioned and read or write with a pencil in a notebook.

But no, I now spend hours on a computer when it was only a short time ago I was glad not to have one.

Time, time consuming, no time to contemplate, no time just to do nothing, the telephone rings and it’s another recorded message that got through the no call list. Try being with a group of people having a supposedly intelligent conversation and two cellphones ring, the people at the next table are each texting, at the other tale we are listening to a loud one-sided conversation that doesn’t seem to make since. Is it time for me to make adjustments to the changes in society? How do I adjust so I am living in the present? How much time do I have to be more integrated into the changing society? Why should waste my time doing so? Is it time to withdraw in isolation and escape the pressing demands of the technological and micro communication era? What about the information age?

I am hooked on Google. I can find out about practically anything I want to know if I just put in the right search terminology. I can’t imagine how my life would have been if I’d had Wikipedia when I was I college. But then the times were different.

Now for the clincher, time is a concept. It may be a measure. It may seem like a reality. I may look at my watch or my cellphone. I may attend an event at a particular time. I have experienced transcending time. I have lost time. I have had plenty of time and then been late.

In traveling around the world I have seen many different kinds of sun dials or contraptions to measure time. Some watches and clocks are responsive to a totally accurate measure of time within micro moments of an accepted absolute. It’s still just a concept that measures relative relationships of an infinitesimal fraction of the universe of universes and still seems to have way too much control over our lives.

Perhaps we should take time to smell the roses.

© 20 March 2013



About
the Author

  

I go by the drag name, Queen Anne Tique. My real name is Michael King. I am a gay activist who finally came out of the closet at age 70. I live with my lover, Merlyn, in downtown Denver, Colorado. I was married twice, have 3 daughters, 5 grandchildren and a great grandson. Besides volunteering at the GLBT Center and doing the SAGE activities,” Telling your Story”,” Men’s Coffee” and the “Open Art Studio”. I am active in Prime Timers and Front Rangers. I now get to do many of the activities that I had hoped to do when I retired; traveling, writing, painting, doing sculpture, cooking and drag.

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Time by Merlyn

Time is still on my side and I try to live it without any fear of what comes next.

I believe that only thing that really matters for any human being is the time they spend on this earth and how they use it.

When my time is up and my life is over I know there will be a feeling of peace and understanding and acceptance of that ever comes next.

My first wife died three years ago along with most of my close friends from the first part of life. I have been lucky. I have never had anyone die that I was close to while they were still a part of my life. They just ran out of time.

Last Thursday a stock car racer I knew by the name of Dick Trickle, age seventy-one, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a N.C., cemetery.

Trickle’s family said he had been suffering from pain that doctors couldn’t diagnose or stop, and that led him to commit suicide.

Dick Trickle was one of the best short-track drivers who ever lived, he won over a 1,000 races on small local tracks before he started racing in NASCAR at 48 years old an age when most drivers are thinking about retiring.

Trickle had a working cigarette lighter in every race car he drove so he could light up during the caution laps.
I will always remember sitting in a little restaurant and talking to Trickle outside a race track sometime in the 90s.
He was fighting a hangover holding a cup of coffee in one hand, smoking a cigarette and laughing about the party he had been to last night.

He drove out the cemetery that he wanted to be buried in called the cops and told them where to find his body, walked a little ways from his truck so no one had to deal with cleaning anything up, and he moved on.

He knew when his time was up and I know he ended his life without any fear of what comes next. That’s how he lived life when time was still on his side.

Time is still on my side and until the day that changes I plan on enjoying it.

About the Author

I’m a retired gay man now living in Denver Colorado with my partner Michael. I grew up in the Detroit area. Through the various kinds of work I have done I have seen most of the United States. I have been involved in technical and mechanical areas my whole life, all kinds of motors and computer systems. I like travel, searching for the unusual and enjoying life each day.