Many Seconds Into The Future by John J. Clayton

Author:John J. Clayton [Clayton, John J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Texas Tech University Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Every night he reads to his beloved dead brother. Reads poetry, reads stories, and, accompanying himself clumsily on guitar, sings Jacob’s own songs to him. The odd thing about this is that Michael is a nonbeliever. Or no: he’s a believer all right—but in nothing— he has certainty that there is nothing beyond or within the material world. The material world is not a veil masking a deeper reality. It’s just what is. Not that Michael believes only in what we can see. He believes in a world best explained by impossible-to-see quantum mechanics and string theory, best described by equations—problematic, quirky, even irrational. He was a double major at Cornell—marketing and physics. Now he’s a successful businessman and a confirmed skeptic. However strange the world might be, it is not holy, not partaking of spirit, whatever that word means. And when we die, we die. Jacob is dead. That’s it, and he’s sure. He’s sure. Michael mourns, he weeps when he can’t stop himself—only when he’s not observed. But he doesn’t want to lie to himself. There are no bridges to another world and no other world to reach.

So why read to a nonexistent Jacob? And why, before he goes to bed, does he sit on the end of his bed across from the. . . .”memory shelf” (as he calls it so he can’t accuse himself of considering it an altar) and talk to Jacob’s picture and read to his brother, who he knows can’t hear him. Michael has never particularly liked poetry, yet every day Michael reads aloud, reads Jacob’s favorites, reads Yeats, reads Donne, reads Whitman, reads Lawrence.

Michael and Jacob were always close, very close. From the time they were little children—Michael the older by three years—they loved each other—and loved to battle. But only with words. And each would have been upset if the other had given in, changed his position. It was sparring, play fighting. As an adult Jacob played the contemplative, ingenuous one, in touch with spirit. He would, if Michael was there to observe, put his hands on the trunk of a tree, and draw energy from the earth or pass negative energy into the earth. And Michael would roll his eyes. “Jacob! What’s your theory about this tree thing? You think it’s got magical powers or something?”

Jacob hit back his brother’s serve—”This maple tree? Well kind of actually. I’m kind of respectful of trees. A tree is energy turned into bark and leaves and such, a pretty damn magical process you gotta admit, but Mike, it’s not a question of trees. There’s energy everywhere. All around us. Me, too, I’m energy going in, energy going out, changing and changing. We’re made of it—of energy. You took physics. Energy can never be lost. Right? ‘Conservation of energy.’ Like when we die, we just change forms. So I lift up my hands to the tree and I touch this eternal energy. Adonoy echad: God is One.”

Michael didn’t believe that for a moment. He still doesn’t.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.