sonora2sonoma

Musing about the worldview

Of the artisan who crafted

The fragment from an ancient Roman decorative motif

Represented on my computer monitor as a photograph

Taken from a display in the Louvre,

I marvel at how different

Our world is today

From the one in which the artist

Found familiarity

At the time of its making.

As I study this treasure from the past,

In the background can be heard

A radio broadcast

Sourced from the internet

Speaking of events thousands of miles away

Being brought within range of my hearing

By a clever manipulation of electrons

Made possible via an elaborate combination

Of rare metals, processed silica and a host of other exotic materials

Bound together by processes beyond the wildest dreams

Of alchemists of yore.

How could the designer of this ancient motif

Even begin to comprehend

A transatlantic phone conversation?

The international space station? A Kindle?

Would not such things, removed from the common understandings

Of the times in which they were made to serve,

Absent paradigms to frame their meaning,

Be so extra-ordinary as to defy explanation?

In such a time, would they not be likened to witchcraft?

We have no way of knowing

How people far in the future

Will interpret artifacts from our time

Any more than the artists who fashioned

Works the likes of this frieze

Could imagine the world we inhabit.

For all man’s ingenuity

And despite stunning accomplishments—

The conquest of gravity, the miracle of antibiotics

Quantum Theory, and on and on—

Extreme longevity remains elusive.

The ability to see beyond the horizon—

To envision the sights and sounds

Of future societies—

Is a sight limited to mystics and sages.

For most, such vision extends only

To the horizons of our lifespans.

Some mysteries, it seems, are destined to remain so.

Just as our time belongs to us,

The future belongs to others.

Tim Konrad

2020.01.02