Line of Duty

He brought heroism into the line of duty.
Verily he is a terrible ancestor.

- Joseph Conrad, The Mirror of the Sea


It's a bemusing scene, where the reporter stands amidst ruins, looking around solemnly, then to camera confides, "There's a lot of history here." In fact, it's fair to say there's a lot of history everywhere, only, not every event generates a stone wall, sunken grave, or golden mask exhumed from desert sands.

Looking up at the sky at night, the stars appear constant in their position and luminosity, but because of the conditions of the space-time continuum many of the objects in view may already have blown apart or otherwise have waned to shadows of their former states. Light escaping them may travel tens of thousands of years before presenting itself to our instruments, by which time it may be over already for any particular light source. It follows, too, that the evidence for the latter state may not reach us for a further tens of thousands of years.

These observations are basic and accepted as measurable data. Less so are the conundrums of dark matter and dark energy, so-named according to one physicist simply because we don't know anything about them, a circumstances not unlike that of 15th century mapmakers, who, where an area beyond known realms was conjectured, inserted, 'Here there be dragons'.

The status quo envelops every life with schedules, timetables, and mind-numbing trivialities. It's often the caee that a 'disruption in the field' of these events is at once welcome and shocking, as it demonstrates the existence of other realities, other dimensions, shoaling upon our own.

One of my own ancestors ("There's a lot of history here.) appeared within a generational succession of farmers, revolutionary volunteers, and circuit court judges as different to them as a desert flower. He boarded a ship and sailed away and carved a new life for himself on another part of the planet. He married a woman of those people, learned the language and prospered through a time of political and social turbulence.

The example he set is difficult to ignore, as a light that takes some time to get through, accepted as having already been overtaken somewhere in the vast expanse of time and experience by other realities.

It's said, the blue of my eyes is his.