(Perforated Lines--you can't resist 'em)

(me and hol)

(left arrow) Tuesday, January 30, 2001 (right arrow)

 

10:24 p.m. Another snippet of photo rescued before the images on it slip between the cracks in the Polaroid and are lost forever.

There's a sort of false security in thinking that we can scan this disintegrating artifact into the computer, turn it into a digital file, and reproduce it in another form for another time and place. We all know, or at least suspect, that the true nature of life is its transparent, fleeting insubstantiality.

I can't put my finger on it. That's what makes it so real.

Last night I listened to a radio interview with one of the Italian doctors involved in the secret, but definitely underway, program to finally clone a human being. He said the genie is already out of the bottle -- it's now just a matter of time.

And I got to thinking -- what if I could clone my kids and, you know ... do it all over again. I have a little more wisdom now. This time, I could do a much better job.

The things I would do differently? First and most important, I would answer their questions in more detail. Of course, I knew I didn't know everything, but what I didn't know back then was that the questions were actually going to stop.

At a certain point, and it came sooner than expected, I wasn't the supreme authority and the source of all knowledge to them any longer. Had I known this ahead of time, I would have seized the chance to explain more, and in better detail. Looking back, I should have considered visual aids. Diagrams. Pie charts.

At the time, way back when they were small, I'm ashamed to admit that I thought the questions and the babble would never end. I wanted my own thoughts and a little personal space and privacy, just the exact same way my mother said she wanted hers.

Who knew it would go by so fast? It didn't seem fast at the time. The time.

Now I want the noise again, and the babble.

This really may not be so moot a point, according to the doctor on the radio. People with enough cash will be able to buy clones of their own. The clones will be babies, of course, and exact replicas of those of us already here -- minus the experiences of those of us already here.

The mind, full of all those experiences, boggles.

Would the second baby girl turn out just like the first baby girl now that all that '70s orange polyester has been thrown away? What is the essence of a person? Experience and memories or genes and protoplasm? Would the two grown girls even get along? Or, if I could mother myself, would I raise a better me?

See how hard it is to answer questions?

 

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(spinning balls)

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