Because I’ve always been oversensitive to my own shortcomings, & if you think in British, immortality might arrive whilst wearing a many-pocketed travel jacket & worsted wool trousers amid artifacts inside perhaps a heavily tapestried natural history museum. Back when Earth’s atmospheric oxygen content was 35%, common flies could boast a wingspan of 27”—a small television—or 10’ centipedes could corkscrew down the forest floor, but now we’re only at 21% oxygen, so the biggest an insect can get is 6½”—thank god, but is that still burn down the house territory for most of you? I must admit that that was 300 million years ago & who really knows where we’ll be in another 300 million years, other than not here. Most of us think our mothers were here long before us, & in one sense you’re right, thank you very much matrilineal DNA, but in another sense, you should have seen a mother’s wingspan hundreds of millions of years ago. Let’s just watch & see what she does next, what she decides to drag back to her burrow. What she leaves for the rest of the colony. And now I wonder if she’s ever going to die, should-have-been-lethal-spinal-cord-injury & miracle surgery survivor & will it be, in yet another 300 million years, or 3 x 300 million, flying half robot & half microplastic filled giraffes with long beaks, extended warranty telephone salespeople, & Mom? Say, what exactly is the weather forecast for the next 1.5 billion years?
* Inspired by Prehistoric Planet, Apple TV (2022-2023), Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (1861), & Brief Candle in the Dark by Richard Dawkins (2015).