...just some silliness. Clocks go back sunday morning. It inspired this silly tale. (Sometimes you just gotta write some silliness...) I've started commenting, and will continue through the week. I'll get to you all, I promise! Thanks for stopping by, it's much appreciated. Happy November, everyone! Peace, Mark ------------------ Turning Back the Clock: A Cautionary Tale * * * November. Bitter cold. The wind cut through Therese's overcoat like a set of steak knives. "We told you not to wear that coat!" yelled her friends. "I like this coat!" she yelled. A gust hit: Therese doubled over. "I'm an icicle!" she screamed. "It's freezing out!" "We told you: Get a new coat!" yelled her friends: "That thing looks like it died and went to Coat Hell!" "I always wear this before a performance!" she yelled. "You know that!" Then, in her deepest theatrical voice, she bellowed: "Be gone, knaves! Come not between the dragon and her wrath!" "Just take care," they cried: "You're premiering tomorrow night!" "Yeah, yeah," she said. "Nyaaa nyaaa..." And she walked home, battling the wind as she went... * * * Now since you're probably lost, and wondering what the hell's happening here, let me explain: This was the night we turn our clocks back. And Therese---our main character---was playing King Lear the next night (!)---from Shakespeare's King Lear. And if you ask: "How come a woman is playing a king?" That's the whole point! There'd been maybe 10 or 20 women who'd played Lear in the history of theater; so this was historic. That's why she wore that coat. It was "lucky". It was charmed... But this didn't come without a price: Lear himself came bounding into this tale, grabbed Therese by the collar, commented on her reeeeealllly nubby coat, and said: "I never said you could play me! But ok---but get a decent coat! It's embarrassing, is all..." And he stormed off, falling several times as traveling between his century and hers "made a guy a little dizzy"... "Break a leg!" he shouted (the old saying for opening nights in the theater). "Yeah, I'll do that," she shouted to him. "God what a putz," she muttered. "I gotta play this guy...shit..." * * * So Therese, our hero, sat at her desk; and, in her best Shakespearean voice, she bellowed: "Blow, winds, crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow!" (Lear). "I'll never get this!" she cried. "I'm screwed! When---suddenly---an old woman appeared, with long silver hair and a gleaming white gown. "Who are you?" she said: "What're you doing here?" "I'm Mother Time," said the woman. (The house shook.) "You're who???" "Mother Time." She put out her hand: The sky turned from night to day in a moment. "Holy shit!" yelled Therese: "It's 3 in the morning, and you turned everything to day!" "I'm good," said Mother Time. She waved her hand: Night came back. "Tonight you turn the clocks back," said Mother Time. "That's why I've come." "Shit---I forgot---" said Therese. "Exactly," said Mother Time. "I've come to grant you a boon. Since you've worked so hard on this role---one of the toughest in all literature---I thought I'd change your clock by centuries instead of minutes: a little treat I have up my sleeve." She leaned in close: "That way you can go back to Lear himself---the early Middle Ages. Do you wanna do that?" "You can do that?" said Therese. "I can." And Mother Time raised her hand, and poof: She turned the clock back so far, they wound up in Ancient Mesopotamia. "God! How'd you do that?" cried Therese. "I'm Mother Time." Therese's clock lay in pieces on the ground. "Leave it," said Mother. "Just come..." So Mother took Therese by the arm, until they entered the capital: Uruk. "This is the capital?" said Therese. "Mmmm-hmmm." "And they call it Uruk?" "Mmm-hmm." "(To herself:) They gotta work on names around here..." "Shuddup," said Mother. "Don't offend them!" Then, suddenly: Whoosh! Whoosh! Several hundred modern French people whizzed by---they'd turned their clocks back too far and were on their way to the Han Dynasty (Ancient China). Don't ask where that was, all I know is it was named after a guy called 'Han'. Or a lady named Han. Maybe it was a dog---I don't know, I'm not an historian. All I know is they were headed to Ancient China and they were worried they may not be able to eat the food... One of the French people called out: "We turned the second hand too far: What land did you land in?" "Mesopotamia!" "Oh cool!" cried the Frenchman: "Say hi!" "We'll do that," cried Therese. The the French people flew away... Then, as Therese looked around, she saw millions of humans whizzing past from all over the world, heading for wherever their over-wound clocks took them: Ancient Greece, Ancient India, the Ancient Pueblos, etc...some of the travelers wound up in the British Parliament in 1832. One woman---get this: Her son kept winding the minute hand back and forth, back and forth, sending his mother back to 3000 B.C., then up to 1932 Berlin, then back to 1200, and then---catch this!---to the formation of life: a small puddle of amino acids where the acids were fucking like crazy, and forming the building blocks of life. "We call 'm proteins," they said: "Whaddya think?" And the poor mother---tired of all this traveling back and forth---cried: "Son: Leave the clock alone! I'm getting whiplash for god's sake!" (One year, he wound the clock so far back, she wound up at the Big Bang, crying, "whooooaaaahhhh, that's reeeeeealllllly big! That's no fuckin' small bang!") Anyway, she grabbed her son, yanked the clock out of his hands, said, "what'd I say! what'd I say!" And she sent him to his room. Unfortunately, he'd played with his clock , and wound up in Postwar Paris where he became an Existentialist and decided life had no meaning. He married a nihilist, and they gave birth to several adorable black holes. But that's another story...(See my upcoming book, Coked-Up Clocks, Adorable Black Holes, and Reeeeeeally Fucked-Up Time Travel: A Study in Modern Nihilism, Paris and Chicago, 2024.) Anyway... Mother Time said: "Do you want to meet the real King Lear?" "Omg, yes!" said Therese. So Mother Time turned her hour hand really fast, and they wound up in 8th Century England, where Lear was sitting in his kitchen, munching a vegetarian burger and watching an episode of F Troop. (That's an old TV show, for those of you under the age of 70...) "How'd you get that show???" said Therese. "Oh, from assholes who turned their clocks back too far," said Lear. "They come back here, barging into our century---jesus---and they don't knock, they make mayhem outa our village, and then they leave all their shit all over the place like we should know what to do with it. Here---here's a blender. What the fuck 'm I gonna do with that?" "Forget the blender," said Therese: "You get TV shows on your iPhone!!!" "Yeah," said Lear: "You 21st Century people leave your modems. Fuckin' great modems: They pick up signals from 1200 years in the future." He leaned close: "That's fuckin' bandwidth, Jack!" Whoosh! "That's just my neighbor," he said: "She fucked up her time change and was transported to---get this---the Old Woman Who Lived In a Shoe! (Whispering:) You ever live in a shoe? Not too comfortable! And this was a pump---it had heels, Jack. So---this is a riot---this neighbor made her bed in the heel and---what else!---she kept sliding down to the toe! I'd tell her, 'Sleep in the toe! That way you won't slide all over the sole!' Oh! And the old woman? She'd been living in a Timberland Boot before my neighbor arrived: Now there's a house! Don't tell me---that thing'll hold up under a typhoon! Why she sold it, I don't know. Said the sole 'had no give'. 'Give'. This is the 8th Century: Who cares about 'Give'." "Can I ask you about your life?" said Therese. "Oh yeah---I'm told you're playing me tomorrow night!" "Yes. I am." "Say something. Go ahead..." He sat back, all ears. She cleared her throat: "Ay, every inch a king!" she cried: "When I do stare, see how the subject quakes, I pardon that---" "---enough!" said Lear. "I didn't ask for a speech. Besides, who the fuck talks like that? But you nailed it, lady: Be proud!" "I-----" "Great," he shouted: "Now get the fuck outa here, I wanna finish F Troop..." Therese looked at Mother Time; and Mother Time said, "I never said he was a bundle of laughs"...And she turned the hands on her clock, and they wound up in Chicago once more, on November 5th, 2023, waiting for the hour to change. "Well," said Mother Time: "I showed you more than most humans will ever see: Be happy and prosper! You're a female King! Now I gotta go---this tale'll be over soon. Break a leg! Give 'm the best Lear they've ever seen!" "I will," said Therese, wiping a tear from her eyes. Then---after regaining her composure (time travel can cause major rashes), she practiced the most difficult speech in the play: "Howl, howl, howl! O! You are men of stones..." And the wind howled, and the storm brewed, and Therese ran into the storm and grabbed it by the lapel and raged against it, because that's what Lear does...and no one knew what she said that night, because it came so deeply from her heart that only the stars could understand it. And eons later, the stars, reminiscing, would say: "Remember that night with Therese? That lady was on fire..." And when she finished, she turned back her clock: But---whoosh!---she wound up in the court of Charlemagne---the Holy Roman Emperor (!!!). And she said: "pardon, 'magne---I wound it too far---" Then she got back home and went to sleep. But---lo---when the play came, she was an hour late---she never turned her clock back!---and she missed the whole play by an hour! But worry not. Therese went onto play all kinds of roles, including a rock in The Epic of Gilgamesh, a wheat noodle in a Japanese haiku, and God,in the Book of Genesis---where she created the Heavens and the Earth, a really fine shoe horn, a high end Cuisinart and a year's subscription to Architectural Digest, as she became a famous architect years later, and lived happily ever after. One other time, she turned her clock back, and wound up as an ameba in the Paleozoic Era. But that's another story. (She got a Tony---"the most convincing ameba since the big bang"...) So, our Moral: When you turn your clocks back, be careful! I turned mine back, and met Attila the Hun. (Hey, for a Hun? Nice guy. (A little hairy, but nice..). Just be careful. I knew one guy who went back so far, he didn't move his bowels through the entire Protestant Reformation. That's all. That's all I got to say...happy clock turning day! The End (No clocks were harmed in the making of this tale. The Director's cut---with an interview with the Clock (and Director's Commentary)---available on Sony 4K. Due out in December...) * * *