You’ll occasionally run into someone who believes that it couldn’t be clearer: everything we’re experiencing was foreseen in the Book of Revelation. I’m not here to argue that, nor am I anyone’s idea of a Biblical scholar, but I think what we’re experiencing today is better illustrated not by the last book in the Bible but by the first.
Thirteen years ago, before it was deliberately changed to “Doctor Who Cares?” there was a special one-shot episode of “Doctor Who,” entitled “Planet of the Dead.” It was good, as any show with David Tennant in the lead role tends to be. Michelle Ryan was excellent as Lady Christina de Souza, and I think I was not alone in hoping she was destined to become the Doctor’s companion.
We’ve all just about had it with hearing of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the organism that produces the disease called COVID-19. But, sadly, we’re not done with it yet, nor it with us, nor are we likely to be anytime soon.
The train ride was from whatever station is near Hamilton to Boston and back. I was in eastern Massachusetts for a horse show, but was taking a day off to do some work, namely visit the new digs of Miguel deIcaza and Nat Friedman, two of the brighter stars in the Linux firmament, and to interview them.
They were great to talk with, and the steampunk décor at their new company, Ximian, was bracing. I’d probably remember it pretty clearly even if that were the only thing that day which was out of the ordinary. But it wasn’t.
It was an unexpected and chilling moment. As is my wont, as I made supper Monday night I had on in the background the Japanese international television station, NHK. The program was about learning the Japanese language by reading the news.
Autumn doesn’t begin until Thursday night — Friday morning if you’re a few time zones east of here — but recent events led me to begin a regular fall pastime a little early this year.
It was expensive as mute buttons go. That seems clear to me, but anyone else might need a little explanation. For the last number of years I have had in my bedroom what was the cheapest little flat-screen television that WalMart had to offer in about 2015, so it wasn’t much good seven years ago and today no one would purchase even a telephone with its low video specifications and lack of inputs.
It happened again, dammit. I was headed to the store when, out of the woods on my left, a deer appeared. Again. It ran in front of my car, again, and I slammed on the brakes, again. There’s always that moment, magnified by the mind’s ability to slow time so that every second is a million instants, of wondering if the deer was fast enough, or I was, and I’d manage to avoid hitting it. Usually it’s a narrow escape.
He who sits upon the throne in Revelation has a patent complaint against current events on Earth. “Behold, I make all things new” is how it’s put in Revelation 21:5. There’s another way of looking at it. The notoriously non-revelatory Karl Marx noted that history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. As with most everything else (we have no reason to doubt that he spelled his name correctly), Marx was wrong in the particulars, though the general idea, that history repeats itself, has evidence in its support.