Tuesday, January 30, 2001
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?
|