LINES
It wasn't too long ago that I remembered I was 14, having a lot of fun, and suddenly I turned 40, then 54, and 12 years later, I became 66.
With my face riddled with new lines showing age, could it be possible that wrinkle lines are a sign of physical deterioration or emanating wisdom?
People younger than you compliment your wrinkles with quiet obeisance. But then, they appear to mutter with a decibel whisper that we are annoyingly wise: whatever that may mean.
What happened? I don't know. Life seems to have eclipsed many things in my life, but I didn't forecast the speed at which I'd grown. It looks like I didn't even have time to fit into my old shoes.
Lines grow with age -- like our wrinkles -- they also magnify. At an elevation, we see things differently. From microscopic, we see only macroscopic. For example, a line in a gorge suggests a river from outer space, and we find it is a lonely road as we move closer.
At other times, lines yield surprises. For example, we weave a line through a set pattern, and we get a string and a rope from this braid. Now, a rope is strong enough to hang anything, including yourself, such as a noose. So, a line is magnificent when it is solid but deadly when it resists breakage.
(Remember the Weapons of Mass Destruction story? How Saddam Hussein died?)
One such example in modern times is when I look at the Great Partition of India. With a stroke of a pen, the Colonialists, Masters of Old India, recreated this state into the modern sovereign forms we see today -- India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh with some dotted lines unresolved like Kashmir. But a line across a cartographer's map -- without proper geographical surveys -- meant that lives, cultures, and religion were shaken and uprooted.
And, let us not forget, how the borders of modern-day Iraq were re-drawn by the British just after the conclusion of the First World War. To this day, this new nation of Iraq -- where the great Babylonian city of now Baghdad was founded -- is a perennially problematic nation that is a source of the great powerâs experimental testing conflict grounds.
Just like its Euphrates and Tigris rivers (lines seen from far up in the sky), Iraq will die of thirst when its waters are ransomed for another political playbook powerplay.
Timeline is when we remember the times from when we were young. Of course, it helps if something drastic happened: as I went to my first job in ages for training within an hour after carrying three buckets of oil, I experienced my first heart attack.
That was when I was 64, and I suppose age lines were beginning to show through.
At sixty-four then, and just as the wrinkles were naturally setting in as face markers, Covid-19, an experiment of the Superpowers called Jekyll and Hyde, overtook my concerns.
As if that wasn't enough, I watch the news often, and without missing a beat, my heartline says, "no, not again," when the two old friends have suddenly become rivals, and they call it, line of control.
Line of control can be depressing because it foretells a lousy omen; when the soldiers start fighting at the borderlines separating the two land-locked nations, it is, of course, assuming a line of authority that leads to a superior.
When this happens, we usually refer to it as a direct line of authority, and the only way we can describe this is in governance.
Governance predates civilization as they are governed or ruled by a person or group of persons. If that source of authority rules or controls by some authority -- whether legitimate or corrupt -- we usually ascribe the process with power.
Again, power in ruling could be referent or ascribed power, so in this case, we can put the three things above the line of control, the line of authority, and the line of access or communication to a source of power.
Power in authority leads us to the next thing about lines: power lines. Power lines are usually energy in nature, and they characterize the cables that transport energy such as electricity to our homes.
At home, there are myriads of lines connecting anything from the outside. If it is not utilities, it is genealogical as when we trace our ancestry to a particular source, for example, our relatives, and how we got our family names. Genealogy is another way of saying that we have family lines, and our family lines mean that our family ties provide a clue to the roots of our identity.
One of the peculiarities of lines is fishing. Recreational fishing means we take our rod-and-tackle and try to catch some fish at the nearest lake, pond, river, estuary, dam, or open seas. Some take it further and join the lines to become a net. So, a fishnet has many lines tied together and catches more fish, usually for commercial purposes.
Before I forget, lines can sometimes be knotty. But they may appear to us as fuzzy. For example, a synapse line in your nervous system could malfunction, and for this reason, some people experience inflammation, and therefore get arthritis.
Indeed, lines are powerful if there is a clear field of observation. Once, scientists tried to calculate the speed of light, so the experiment began with a clear line of sight. Later, as experiments became sophisticated, scientists observed that the earth was not flat but curved, and therefore they attempted to bend light. The technique to turn light (whether sunlight or artificial light) and study its properties is known as quantum physics. From this science, we begin to theorize the history of our universe.
That is where we shall end today's topic: Lifeline. If our lives could have a line, would it be like a string of pearls, a cluster (a cluster still requires a cable line to hold the diamonds together), of diamonds, or merely a theory of existence called string theory?