Pine Nuts with McAvoy Layne: Re-reflecting and the art of arresting time
Back in my twentieth year, I don’t suppose I ever gazed at anything for longer than two seconds at a time, unless it might be a lady. Nowadays, sunlight dancing on the surface of the lake can suspend me in awe for several minutes at a time.
“Getting-on” has endowed this old cattle rustler with an appreciation for beauty found in places where I was never able to see beauty before. Yesterday I stared at a stone for five full minutes, while images of long-gone Native Americans danced in my mind’s eye. This gift is more than just a passing appreciation for beauty, it’s an act of arresting time.
Time is malleable. It can be manipulated. Take it from someone who has lived most of his life in the 19th century, slowing down can put years on your life. By all rights I should have cashed-in my casino chips four or five years ago.
“Re-reflecting,” is the name I’ll temporarily lend to the artform of arresting time. You know it’s happening when you glance at a boulder for example, and you see more than the stone, you see yourself, or somebody else in that stone. And when you finally look away, if you don’t feel chicken skin all over, well, try again, on a different stone.
There are two ways to stop time that I know of, the second way is being summoned home, and answering that summons with propriety. A friend of mine did exactly that recently, and should I get that same call tomorrow or the day after, well, I will know exactly how to answer that summons thanks to Ralph.
I met Ralph at the Calaveras Frog Jumping Contest, along with his charming wife, Claudia, about twenty years ago, and we became pen pals. When Ralph learned he had pancreatic cancer a year or so ago, well, his emails got even more up-beat than usual, so up-beat that when I received the news of his promotion to glory, well, I was staggered.
Ralph Alldredge was a good man, as good as they come. My last correspondence to him proved all too true, as I would not get an answer.
When I think of you, Ralph, I am reminded of the Olympic Creed,
“The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not to win but to take part,
just as the most important thing in life is not the triumph, but the struggle…”
Your fan and forever friend,
Mac
Friend Ralph has arrested time as we know it, and is on the other side, publishing a paper, or fishing, or doing whatever pleases him, while benefiting his neighbors.
Ralph makes us all proud in the way he handled the biggest struggle any of us can face. May he enjoy his just reward, and may his lovely soul rest in eternal peace.
— 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."
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