Short Step to Oblivion
This morning on the History Channel I saw a film about the new leader of Cuba, Raul Castro, that started with shots of an accident that happened four years ago. Most likely the Cuban exiles in Miami cheered mightily at the time, but today it sent chills through me, because it was just the kind of possibility that I've come to fear. Nothing much is needed to cause it, yet the chances of it being catastrophic are far too great.
When a person is walking along he trusts his downward peripheral vision to tell him when whatever is under his feet has suddenly changed enough to become a peril. Such a situation is particularly present when, after a person takes a number of steps on one level, suddenly there is a sharp dropoff of no more than 8, 9, or 10 inches to another level of the same color. To the leisurely scanning eye this dropoff might show itself only as a thin line, easily invisible to someone who is not paying full attention and has no reason to expect such a need to step down.
Four years ago, when he was about the same age as I am now, Fidel Castro was striding along somewhere, glorying in the toasting and adulation that he has been enjoying for nearly five decades, pointing his finger and maybe declaring something, when such a dropoff suddenly presented itself yet escaped his notice. After he lifted one foot an inch or two while expecting to set it down again on the same solid surface, to his instant horror and panic he instead felt his foot finding nothing after descending that inch or two, and not after another inch either, or another or another....
You probably know the feeling.
With no one ahead of him to break his fall, the longtime leader of Cuba and renowned international maverick, survivor of dozens of assassination schemes, and driven powerfully ahead by the force of his confidence and his stride, half toppled and half hurtled forward and slammed face down onto a hard surface, with his head crashing into a row of ordinary metal folding chairs. It was quite a startling sight, and he a "world leader." Nothing lends an ominous and prophetic tone to the proceedings quite like the sight of a set of metal folding chairs thrown into sudden disarray by the skull of an iron man.
Instantly Castro's ever-present entourage surrounded him, but the damage had been done, and it's no wonder that now, four years later, he is such a physical wreck, and he has had to hand over the reins to his younger brother, Raul, who, at 76, the same age as Fidel was then, is himself deep into his bye-bye years. Even a younger person might have trouble coming back from a fall like that, and you can imagine that Fidel's large frame contributed to the force of his hitting that concrete or stone floor or whatever it was.
I am hopeful that our lone cat, Beauty, is protecting me from such an event. He does this by his love of walking around underfoot with the utmost silence, forcing me to be always aware of where he is. His jet black color still doesn't always make him him easy to see in the light, while in the darkness he presents a definite danger.
For instance at night sometimes he will wait outside on the deck while I'm in my workshop. When I come out I have to be diligent about remembering that he could be there, and in his haste to get a little ahead he could cause me to stumble over him and fall headlong down a set of about 12 steps. That or some other similar mishap could have consequences too uncomfortable to think about, especially in my usual solitary conditions.
The moral of this post should've been second nature to Mr. Castro especially. Always be on the lookout for Spanish doubloons sticking half up out of the ground.
When a person is walking along he trusts his downward peripheral vision to tell him when whatever is under his feet has suddenly changed enough to become a peril. Such a situation is particularly present when, after a person takes a number of steps on one level, suddenly there is a sharp dropoff of no more than 8, 9, or 10 inches to another level of the same color. To the leisurely scanning eye this dropoff might show itself only as a thin line, easily invisible to someone who is not paying full attention and has no reason to expect such a need to step down.
Four years ago, when he was about the same age as I am now, Fidel Castro was striding along somewhere, glorying in the toasting and adulation that he has been enjoying for nearly five decades, pointing his finger and maybe declaring something, when such a dropoff suddenly presented itself yet escaped his notice. After he lifted one foot an inch or two while expecting to set it down again on the same solid surface, to his instant horror and panic he instead felt his foot finding nothing after descending that inch or two, and not after another inch either, or another or another....
You probably know the feeling.
With no one ahead of him to break his fall, the longtime leader of Cuba and renowned international maverick, survivor of dozens of assassination schemes, and driven powerfully ahead by the force of his confidence and his stride, half toppled and half hurtled forward and slammed face down onto a hard surface, with his head crashing into a row of ordinary metal folding chairs. It was quite a startling sight, and he a "world leader." Nothing lends an ominous and prophetic tone to the proceedings quite like the sight of a set of metal folding chairs thrown into sudden disarray by the skull of an iron man.
Instantly Castro's ever-present entourage surrounded him, but the damage had been done, and it's no wonder that now, four years later, he is such a physical wreck, and he has had to hand over the reins to his younger brother, Raul, who, at 76, the same age as Fidel was then, is himself deep into his bye-bye years. Even a younger person might have trouble coming back from a fall like that, and you can imagine that Fidel's large frame contributed to the force of his hitting that concrete or stone floor or whatever it was.
I am hopeful that our lone cat, Beauty, is protecting me from such an event. He does this by his love of walking around underfoot with the utmost silence, forcing me to be always aware of where he is. His jet black color still doesn't always make him him easy to see in the light, while in the darkness he presents a definite danger.
For instance at night sometimes he will wait outside on the deck while I'm in my workshop. When I come out I have to be diligent about remembering that he could be there, and in his haste to get a little ahead he could cause me to stumble over him and fall headlong down a set of about 12 steps. That or some other similar mishap could have consequences too uncomfortable to think about, especially in my usual solitary conditions.
The moral of this post should've been second nature to Mr. Castro especially. Always be on the lookout for Spanish doubloons sticking half up out of the ground.
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 10:29 AM
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