Pine Nuts with McAvoy Layne: Time Travel 2021
Submitted by Jeff Munson on Mon, 05/31/2021 - 10:01am
So, are pandemics like Cicadas? Where Cicadas have a 17 year cycle, might pandemics have a 99 year cycle? Mother Nature does offer-up some intriguing specimens of symmetry. So do Cicadas and pandemics have built-in alarm clocks that go off on time every time? Or might climate change spring their clocks forward like we do with daylight saving time?
Cicadas can’t be smart enough to keep a calendar while sleeping, can they? And we know viruses don’t have brains, so they can’t really do much more than stumble onto a host once they awaken, yet they are both efficacious at climbing out of bed when it’s time to get up.
We two-legged animals have internal clocks ticking away in our chests. How many times have you set an alarm, only to wake-up one minute before it goes off? Our internal clocks are ticking like that stopwatch on 60 Minutes, synchronized by the orchestral interconnections of all living things within the harmony of the universe.
This reality came to me while overlooking the Lake of the Sky from the advantage of Rifle Peak on a clear Tahoe day when I could see almost the entire circumference of the lake. I fixed my focus on the far shore and imagined I was attached by a string to the center of the Earth, and could spin around the globe faster and faster until I was actually sling-shotted ahead of real time.
It was only a second or so, but that was enough to cause me to tremble like a leaf on a Quaking Aspen, and I had to gather myself before taking a few unsteady steps through heavy gravitational waves before resuming my run.
Being a second or so ahead of my previous real time served me well the next day as I was crossing an intersection on foot, and a lady decided to mow me down, or at least that’s how I saw it at the time.
Actually she didn’t see me, but I saw her, and saw what was about to happen if I did not turn myself into Bob Beamon and leap out of harm’s way, which I did. You could not have slipped an ace of spades between my behind and her bumper as she passed me by, which in terms of time might have amounted to a sheer second.
In other words, had I not experienced my little time-travel episode of the day before, well, I would not be typing this account today, but would be pushing up turnips somewhere where the soil needs enriching.
It might be safe to say that my internal clock skipping ahead a beat, might have saved me by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin. Should you be considering resetting your internal clock, may I humbly recommend Rifle Peak overlooking the Lake of the Sky for your launch. And I look forward to seeing you in the near future.
— For more than 30 years, in over 4,000 performances, columnist and Chautauquan McAvoy Layne has been dedicated to preserving the wit and wisdom of “The Wild Humorist of the Pacific Slope,” Mark Twain. As Layne puts it: “It’s like being a Monday through Friday preacher, whose sermon, though not reverently pious, is fervently American."
