Time 2

When we are young, I think we have a tendency to believe that the world was created for us, that the time that existed before we were born never really happened, that people and places like Abraham Lincoln and ancient Rome were all but fairy tales, no different than Jack and the Beanstalk and Snow White.

The truth goes deeper. We grow and find out that Mom really was ten years old once, that Pop Pop really did fight a war 'back in the day', it really was Nancie in those faded pictures. We discover, as we travel deeper and deeper into the past, opening like a wound behind a slicing knife, that the world is a much different place than the sheltered nursery we grew up in. There was a time before electricity, machines, and books. People used to fight with swords, sacrifice each other, kneel before tyrant kings. Further back in time civilizations built pyramids and worshipped the sun--they moved in groups across Asia and the plains of Africa--people, if they can be called that, stood upright and began to walk on two legs instead of four.

We realize, finally, that the past opens up, goes deeper than we could possibly imagine, to a point where we have no hope of understanding the true expanse of it. It goes so far, so unimaginably backward, that anything can be possible under the horizon of the unknown.