8:22

With age comes wisdom. Edward had heard that somewhere. Well, he had the age thing down. He wasn’t so sure about the wisdom, though. He’d spent a lot of time screwing things up lately, mostly because he hadn’t stopped and thought it all through. “Patience, my dear rabbit, patience,” he murmured to himself.

And so Edward found himself beneath the same bush, in the same park for the fifth night in a row. All the evidence pointed to this place; unfortunately, it didn’t seem to point to any particular time. Hence the patience mantra that had been rolling through his head these last few days and nights.

He’d watch the world go by, the insects speeding by at a rate that made Indy cars seem glacier like, and the passage of clouds drifting purposelessly across the skies. Young children had screamed by and an old man and his old dog had ambled across his sight lines twice a day, every day.

He’d miss that old couple. When they strode out, they had no place to go and seemingly nothing better to do. But Edward knew better than to write them off as the flotsam drifting at the end of a long life. Every day, twice a day, the two set out, companions and confidants, and faced the world head on. Twice a day, every day, they discovered new things, breathed new air and took in the world changing about them.

These are the observers: observers who  see the world and are not fooled by the masks and layers of social detritus that accumulate around them. Ancient archaeologists whose very years allow them to brush off the strata of time and change, and see the universe for what it is and what it is evolving into.

It is a pity, Edward thought not for the first time, that life holds to one of two cycles. Either we grow old and more childlike, seeing the world once again though an infant’s eyes but unable to affect it, or we grow ancient and wise, clear-eyed at last but without an audience. Either way the fates swing us, there may be only a tiny, select few, like Edward himself, who remain able to poke and prod and hopefully produce enough momentum to effect even the smallest of change to the raging currents of time.

And as the shadows slowly moved across the grass in front of him, Edward glanced across that mottled swath of green and saw the old white-muzzled dog awkwardly look back across his shoulder, catch Edward’s eye and wink.