Well, here we are again at the close of another year.

I think there’s something to that notion that time seems to move faster as we age – due to the fact that (perceptually) any given increment of time (day, month, year) makes up an increasingly smaller portion of our life as a whole. In other words, when you are seven, a year is one-seventh of your life, but when you are thirty … you get the idea.

These damned things sure seem to be flying by lately.

Of course, pondering the “last day” of the year got me thinking of one of my favorite sci-fi indulgences: Logan’s Run.

Based on a 1967 novel, the 1976 motion picture (starring Michael York) is a kitschy classic not to be missed. I think they achieved greatness with the title font for the posters alone … never mind the rest of the art direction. The TV show was plain awful, but I remember watching it as a kid. I was a science fiction junkie back then, getting my fix any way I could. Which was a lot harder with no DVD, no VHS, and no cable. A re-make has been in the works for some time, but I doubt it will ever see the light of day. There is no sanctuary!

Of course, whether today is actually the last day is arbitrary depending on your calendar & reckoning. Looking over a sampler of New Year’s traditions, I remembered that just a few weeks ago I was trying to figure out how many different calendars were in active use around the world. The Earth Calendar is a pretty interesting little page, which also provides the helpful answer. (Which is: “over a dozen” if you’re lazy.)

Arbitrary in a sense, and yet there is a universal time. If there was “a beginning”, then there is a correct time. (Leaving aside for the moment the existence and definition of time in general.) I don’t know if anyone else ever stops to do this, but periodically I will imagine the spinning solar systems & galaxies as colossal cosmic clock faces … spinning ’round as they sweep out the millennia. Like the black & white school clocks most of us remember watching … watching … watching …

Although it may have been less commercially successful, a few bits of my favorite music by ELO come from the album simply entitled TIME. It was introduced to me during the age of cassette stereo, as I spent a few weeks’ visit with family in Huntsville, AL. Each morning my cousin Chris & I helped his older brother Lowell deliver his newspapers (a large automobile route). I recall swerving dangerously down suburban southern streets, delivering papers in the cold dark of a summer morning, with the car stereo blasting out ‘Twilight’.

I can still feel the chill of the carport floor, smell the ink staining our fingers … and the vinyl of the seats.

The holidays are about to end … along with another year. The drear and melancholy of another January will set-in … but it is memories such as these which sustain me.

Across the night I saw your face
You disappeared without a trace
You brought me here, but can you take me back again?