Last Acts

Game over:

The last game at Upton Park.
An older form of football, now obsolete.
Game over in Syria. Another nation in tatters.
The Vaquita Marina, headed for extinction (60 left).

The final class, the last hour, time ticking down. You observe the students, some take one final glance over their shoulders as they leave the examination room. What next? A brief profile of someone and then they move on. Only we age, remember something of our own strange relationship with fleeting time. How many years ago was it now? 

For the students a walk through the open door into a wide, unknown space. In years to come some will want to come back and see you, like an old familiar wall that reminds them of something they once knew. But for most you will just be a name, perhaps mentioned in passing at a pizza restaurant when one of them asks, "I wonder what happened to old ___?" 

I think of my old teachers, since only one or two are still alive. It never occurred to you that they had an inner life, a family, heartache, that they were as confused as you but in a different way.

There is no more time for reflection. Get the job done, put on your hat, clear the cheques and head out, north by northwest. Think of the old tree, and you sitting in the shade at 6 o'clock wondering to yourself, is this a moment in the future or the past, is life but a dream?