Years ago, one of the formerly big three channels aired some kinda drama about a meteor shower or maybe enormous forest fires, I don’t remember for sure, burning up a wide swath of the western United States. Specifically, California, if I recall correctly.

I know, I know, but we can dream, can’t we?

Anyway, the format of the program was as if news agencies were reporting the events. My parents had finally gotten cable TV, and it was my father’s habit to turn on CNN and let it drone away for hours, until Mother would get sick of it and disarm him of the television remote. We shall see the correlation of this annoying habit to the program in question shortly.

Now this was not the sort of program to interest me, but I was vaguely aware of its existence. At that time, I was living out of state and by chance the program aired during the customary time for my weekly call home to check in with the folks. Mother and I were chatting, and she said, isn’t it awful about all those people getting burned up?

What people, Mother?

All those people getting burned up in California. It’s all they’re showing on the news, haven’t you heard? It’s horrible.

I was not sure how to process this, because Mother always took being wrong quite personally. But finally, I couldn’t stand it any longer, and as innocently as possible asked her if she’d ever heard of Orson Wells, knowing full well that as a young ‘un, she’d heard his famous Martian invasion broadcast on the radio.

Yeah, she said, War of the Worlds, what of it? Then maybe a five-count pause, during which I knew better than to say a word.

No, she said. Then maybe another five-count pause.

Dammit, she said. Then yet another long pause.

Click, the phone said.

I thought it best to not bring up the subject the next time I called home. So, I didn’t.

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a comment to "Mines Alumni" from Wild, Wild West

Gerard once put up a story called “The Witness”, a translation of Jorge Louis Borges work into English, about the passing of the last Saxon in England, and how when he died “the last eyewitness images” of those days would die with him. As would other memories be gone forever when others died. Very poignant, haunting even; I would like it read at my funeral. I put it up in the comments here when the plug was pulled on Gerard’s blog.

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“The Witness,” a very short story by Jorge Luis Borges
by VANDERLEUN on FEBRUARY 10, 2019

In a stable that stands almost in the shadow of the new stone church, a man with gray eyes and gray beard, lying amid the odor of the animals, humbly tries to will himself into death, much as a man might will himself to sleep. The day, obedient to vast and secret laws, slowly shifts about and mingles the shadows in the lowly place; outside lie plowed fields, a ditch clogged with dead leaves, and the faint track of a wolf in the black clay where the line of woods begins. The man sleeps and dreams, forgotten.

The bells for orisons awaken him. Bells are now one of evening’s customs in the kingdoms of England, but as a boy the man has seen the face of Woden, the sacred horror and the exultation, the clumsy wooden idol laden with Roman coins and ponderous vestments, the sacrifice of horses, dogs, and prisoners. Before dawn, he will be dead, and with him, the last eyewitness images of pagan rites will perish, never to be seen again. The world will be a little poorer when this Saxon man is dead.

Things, events, that occupy space yet come to an end when someone dies may make us stop in wonder—and yet one thing, or an infinite number of things, dies with every man’s or woman’s death, unless the universe itself has a memory, as theosophists have suggested. In the course of time there was one day that closed the last eyes that had looked on Christ; the Battle of Junin and the love of Helen died with the death of one man. What will die with me the day I die? What pathetic or frail image will be lost to the world? The voice of Macedonia Fernandez, the image of a bay horse in a vacant lot on the corner of Sarrano and Charcas, a bar of sulfur in the drawer of a mahogany desk?

English translation by Andrew Hurley Via – Biblioklept”

Where is Gerard’s desk now, I wonder.

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