Long distance, pt.II

I usually get a kick out of those stories in which there’s a leap in time for the ending in lieu of ‘em “And they lived happily ever after”-isms, you know, when the plot is fast-forwarded either months, years or decades into the future and both the characters and the readers are allowed a sudden, definitive change of perspective, a fresh point of view in everything that’s passed before. Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence employs such a device to a wonderful effect at the ending and so does Jack Kerouac’s Maggie Cassidy (a rather obscure book of Jack’s that ranks among my favorite novels of all-time). Roy Thomas too reportedly planned to use it in the last chapter of his Kree-Skrull War saga back in the ‘60s but never got around to it because artist Neal Adams was suddenly off the Avengers monthly comic book where the story was taking place.

…Have you ever seen heavy rain pouring against an airplane’s wings as it soars in high speed past the clouds late at night?

I wish I could go full circle with you on this one and tell you this flight was bound way further up North at long last- bound to you, no less- but that’s not what Wharton did, in the end, and that’s not what Jack did either (as for Marvel’s Krees and the Skrulls and their interplanetary war, well, you know I’m mostly a DC kid these days).
So hey as far as you & I are concerned the zeitgeist itself is somewhere else entirely, man.

It is said wisdom comes with age and I for one am inclined to agree. There’s so much more to be told regarding being here in 2007 yet in some very specific, limited sort of way I wish it were 2057 right now, just off the bat, just so I could look back at 2000 or 2007 with a different set of eyes.


What will I think of life in 50 years hence? What will I think of you?
…I wonder just what did Superman think of Lyla Lerrol after all, in the end, back in the day…