Going out of my way to make things better

I had an appointment to visit my therapist, Madeleine Pelletier, in 1907 in Paris, France. I like to open up and tell her my embarrassing woes and fears because if she tells anyone what I reveal, I wasn’t born yet, and I can skip the public humiliation.

But I missed my appointment because the past was temporarily jammed. Occasionally the time-travel tunnel lanes to the past break down. They wear out a lot because most people travel back in time, trying to make sense of things, or fix really dumb mistakes. Mice make the tunnel’s repairs. Mice are the main maintainers, but there is also one ocelot.

So I was left feeling edgy and frustrated with my backed up neurosis. Then I had the wild thought to travel to the future and unload my feelings. I’d be totally safe because if I went far enough forward in time I’d be long dead, and I definitely wouldn’t care who knew my distortions.

I set the time-place configurations to San Francisco, the year 72,385. I arrived to a thriving city, with of course, flying cars. But there were no humans. There were living beings that looked like jello. They were square shaped and transparent, wobbled when they walked, and were either red, green, or blue.

I chose a red being to make contact with because that’s my favorite color. I can’t get enough of red. When I was a kid, I wouldn’t wear clothes unless they were red. Kids at school used to tease me saying that I was a fire hydrant, not because I helped put out fires, but because dogs constantly peed on me.

I said to the red being, “Excuse me, but can I have a moment of your time?” The red being stopped and wobbled in place. I told the red being everything that was going on in my heart and mind. It listened with unconditional love. I felt free for the first time in my life. The red being remained silent after I’d finished. I ate it. It was cherry flavored.

Time-Travel Twofer!

I sometimes do a twofer time-travel trip. That’s where I plan to go to two time-and-places, directly from one to the other, rather than come home from one trip, take a nap, wash up, and go on the next one.

I did a twofer today when I first traveled to Zanzibar, the year 1498. That came about when I was listening to Billy Joel’s Zanzibar. I thought, “A clue.” I picked the year by random. I’ve always been able to think of random numbers. I can’t do computations with numbers. Not even simple addition. But I can arbitrarily generate number combinations in my mind. For instance 6902, 8708753102, 16.

So there I was on a beach in Zanzibar. On the water approached two small boats with Portuguese flags. I knew the banner because when I was a kid I used to memorize countries’ flags. There was something about colors on a rectangle that did it for me.

The small boats were coming from large sailing ships parked out in the distance. When they arrived, out came the crew members, and one fancifully dressed gentleman, who introduced himself as His Lordship, Admiral of the Seas of Arabia, Vasco de Gama. I declared myself, Fancy Pants Sovereign of the Utmost Prahhh, Sir Burlap Tires.

As monarch I was customarily bestowed with a thirty-foot potted conifer, a solid gold container of powdered asafetida spice, and a sleeping donkey named Pratskyfelted. I responded by laying on the ground and rolling back and forth. Respecting the customs of Prahhh, Vasco followed suit, but he got sand in his armor, and threw a fit. This made me happy because it’s one of my favorite things to watch powerful people lose it.

I’m badly allergic to donkey and had a sneezing attack. I had to get out of their quick and got in my time-travel machine and went to Blyth, Northumberland, England, August 19th, 1969. I chose the time for a reason you’ll see. I chose the place because I really like the name of the county. As a child I used to skip and sing, “Northumberland, Northumberland, Northumberland!” Once I sang it straight from breakfast to bedtime. My father was impressed. He estimated the amount of times I sang the name, which came to 85,220, and contacted the Guinness Book of World Records. I was distraught when my father told me I’d been defeated two years earlier by Billy Baskenwarsh, a nine year old, from Blyth, Northumberland, who had repeated the name of the county 99,587 times.

So I got out of my time-travel machine and walked to 1201 Beconsfield Street. I knocked and Oliver Baskenwarsh answered. He was holding a small metal clicker and he was clicking in time to his son Billy’s repetitions of, “Northumberland.” I asked if I could see the number. Mr. Baskenwarsh held up the clicker which said 4,309. I thanked him and said, “Morth’s Umberland, Gorth Wonderman, Sworce Blunder Sand.” Billy’s forehead wrinkled as he said, “Norfwonderwand.” Mr. Baskenwash stopped clicking and sighed with disappointment. Billy was silent and hung his head low.

The future Washington DC

I write a lot about my time-travel experiences to the past, but not that often about my trips to the future. I think that’s because I’m worried you might think I’m making up the events I experienced because you can’t check them on Wikipedia to see if they actually happened.

Anyway, today I went to the Washington, DC, and the year 3001. No buildings were there. It was pretty much open fields and no trees. There was stream that flowed through the city and it was filled with plenty of trout and salmon. There were occasional animals wandering around, like llamas, deer, and armadillos. The nice thing was, the animals didn’t run away when I got near them. Now and then I could pet one of them. Petting animals seems like one of the better activities to do, as opposed to interacting with humans, which most of the time results in conflict and hurt feelings.

In my wanderings I eventually came to a small shack. The door was closed. No one was coming in and out. I knocked on the door. I didn’t hear any voices, but I did hear a whirring sound.

I opened the door, which creaked. I figured it hadn’t been opened in a while. Inside was a small wooden table.  On top was an open metal box. Inside were two spinning wheels with a belt that turned. The belt sometimes moved faster, other times slower. The device made a lot of noise.

I went back out and closed the door. A gazelle stood and looked at me. I said hello. I hoped that it would speak back, but things hadn’t changed that much.

Time to let go of expectations

I don’t put much thought into my time-travels. Sure, when I first started, I made a list of all the time and places I had to travel to. The first trip I took was to see the signing of the Declaration of Independence. But it was mostly humid with an overwhelming stench of body odor, sewage, and unchanged spittoons. Everyone in the room looked utterly exhausted. I left after about a minute. Then I went to the parting of the Red Sea. Of course, the spreading of the waves was extraordinary, but it was hard to watch all those fish flopping around on the sea bed.

I’d rather make a quick decision, so I don’t have expectations. I did that today when I decided to time-travel to a dirt road outside the tiny town of Hannopil, Ukraine in 1743. I came upon two rabbis out for a walk. We introduced ourselves. They were brothers. Rabbi Zusha and Rabbi Elimelech. I told them I had traveled from 2018. They had no interest to know how things had changed. That’s good, because I always make that part up. A few days back I’d visited Walt Whitman and told him that in the future we all move to the Moon for a change of pace, and it’s really nice for almost a month, and then all the same problems raised their heads, so we moved back to the Earth. Whitman said he was surprised our lunar stay lasted that long.

The rabbis offered me a piece of their loaf of bread. Back then, you would consider it a boon just to have a tiny wheat cake as your food ration for the day, and find yourself giving away pieces to passersbyers so that they wouldn’t kill you for the entire loaf.  I don’t like bread. It makes my mouth go, “I really don’t want to do this.” But I took and ate it because to decline a grain product back then meant you had better food products on your person, and people would kill you for whatever that might be.

Rabbi Zusha said, “We walk down the road of life, looking forward to where we are going, but once we get there, we are no longer walking.” I said, “Ah-ha, mmmm, yes.” But I wanted to shoot myself in the head because I can’t stand philosophy. And then Rabbi Elimelech said, “We fool ourselves to think that there is a there there. We reach solemnity when we learn to drop the t.”

I stepped off to the side of the road and threw up the bread.

Time for lunch

One of the reasons I like to time travel is that I hate to fly. When I fly, there’s the packing, the long drive to the airport, the tension in the airport of going through security, the frustration of not having enough money to be able to board first, the agony of sitting so close to people for hours, and the long and slow dis-boarding.

But when I time-travel, I get to where I’m going in an instant. Like this morning, I thought, “Hey, I’d like to go to Sicily.” I punched in the time-space coordinates and arrived in Syracuse, Sicily. I randomly had chosen the year 640. Emperor Constantine the Bearded and his wife, Fausta, were in the midst of moving the capital of Sicily to Syracuse. It used to be in Constantinople. It’s some kind of miracle I didn’t fall asleep when I typed that. I find the details of history as dull as reading the manufacture’s warranty on the inside of my eyelids.

Emperor Constantine asked if I could help them unloaded the ox-drawn carts of their stuff. I said yes. But then I noticed there were over a thousand carts. I got upset at myself because I was hoping to just sight-see. But the the Emperor gave me a gold coin, and I could use the money, so I began the unpacking. But after a few minutes my back started to hurt. I tried to explain, but it turns out back pain didn’t exist then. Emperor Constantine ordered my immediate death, and I was brought to a head-chopping-off block. (It turns out there was one on every block. Head removal was the most common way of resolving grievances the civil officials had with the populace.)

The axe operator, his name was Cyril, set my head on the block, and I was asked if I had any last words. I paused to give impact and said, “Life is a ball rolling down the hill. It rolls over bumps. It rolls over small rocks. Sometimes the ball will bump into a tree, bounce back upwards, and then continue on down the hill. My rolling seems to be coming to an end. But with balls, you can never be sure.” That’s when I rubbed the time-travel jack in my pocket and reappeared back to today.

I still have the gold coin with me. Now that I’ve told you my adventure, I’m going to Blerghoeorves Deli, and use it to pay for a Pastrami on Rye.

The frustration of time-hiccuping

I bought my time-travel machine from Costco five years ago. It was a really good price, and at the time it was pretty good quality. But over time I’ve discovered it has some bugs.

For instance, yesterday I was hoping to visit Mary Anning, the noted fossil collector, in October 1833, in a field outside Dorset, England, when she barely missed being killed by a landslide that took the life of her dog, Tray. I was hoping to save the dog. When you do something kindly to a dog, they’ll love you forever, and I need all the love I can get.

I showed up for a few seconds, Mary and Tray looked up at me from fossiling, I started to yell, “Back up”, but I time-hiccuped to 1066 London, and the Coronation of William the Conqueror. I really don’t like things ceremonial. I’m anti-fancy. I prefer things dirty, messy, and if I’m lucky, abominable.

I did attend the Coronation dinner though because I knew they’d be serving mutton. There were platters and platters of mutton. I love mutton. I like it diced, roasted, boiled, fried, baked, barbecued, steamed, braised, stewed, sautéed, stir-fried, grilled, and pickled. I ate three plates of mutton, waited an hour, and then had another plate.