Changements

A common science fiction motif is the space voyager, who after centuries in a cryogenic state arrives on a distant planet unchanged, feeling as though mere minutes have passed. He then procedes, this voyager, to start star blasting and energy raying the place up with nary a change of clothing.

In my experience, our bodies aren't that stupid. Time, apparently, penetrates deeper than I ever thought. Even my most primitive instincts, as it turns out, are hand-wringing little clock watchers who dissemble into chaotic rebellion the second you mess things up a bit. The effects of crossing over half a dozen time zones and a few thousand miles? Two weeks of alternating 72 hour days and 17 hour nights. Flash Gordon would spend his time with the Voltrons jumping between mania and a coma.

Our bodies reject other changes as well, that our minds hardly register. Take a bed, for instance. I think that a bed is a bed, provided it is moderately soft and covered in some heat-retention device. My body (or is it my soul?) however hardly finds the cold empty folds of my childhood sheets a substitute for warm nighttime lips and soft embraces. It knows something is missing, and stubbornly rebels.

Countries work the same way, on one level. Fifty years of communism couldn't stop the Poles from being Catholic, nor could hundreds of years of imperialism turn the Mexicans into Anglos or Spaniards. Johnston's Army almost made Utah normal but something still resists.

Or take families. Three years of separation, harsh words and burned bridges, can't erase fundamental bonds. You feel it as basketball games fall together so easily and jokes seize everyone together in a shared folly that expresses all the pent up exhaustion, anger, forgiveness, despair, and relief in a rush of energy.

Call it inertia. It seems to be.