Unison

 "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,..., it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, ..."
- Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities.

It was the best of times, 
it was the worst of times, 
it was the age of wisdom, 
it was the age of foolishness, 
it was the epoch of belief, 
it was the epoch of incredulity, 
it was the season of Light, 
it was the season of Darkness, 
it was the spring of hope, 
it was the winter of despair.

It was a time for the worst,
it was a time for the best,
it was the era of greed,
it was the era of contentment,
it was the hour of need,
it was the hour of magnanimity,
it was the sentence of sloth,
it was the sentence of industry,
it was the solstice of incongruence,
it was the equinox of symmetry.

But, it must be said,
it was not the crossroads of triumph,
nor the crossroads of disaster.
People remember it that way,
but there's more nostalgia in that than truth.
Likewise,
it was not the rule of warmth,
it was not the rule of cold,
wasn't the cycle of love,
wasn't the cycle of indifference,
not the chapter of comfort,
not the chapter of angst.
By utterly no means was it the chapter of angst.

A closer reading of history will prove that,
in reality,
it was the tenure of solitude,
it was the tenure of company,
it was the spell of calm,
it was the spell of wrath,
it was the adolescence of disarray,
it was the dotage of indulgence.

Maybe it was the aeon of vanity,
maybe it wasn't,
but I'm one hundred percent certain that
it was the aeon of humility.
Then again,
it was the semester of silence,
it was the semester of prolixity,
it was the nanosecond of haste,
it was the millennium of patience,
so alright, I'm not all that sure.

I have been going around saying
it was the eyeblink of serendipity,
and sometimes the eyeblink of ill fortune,
that it was the jiffy of surfeit,
and--against all odds--the jiffy of shortfall.
So picture my astonishment when I looked up my diary
and saw, in my own writing, that actually
it was the heartbeat of crisis,
it was the heartbeat of harmony,
it was the two shakes of a lamb's tail of ailment,
it was the two shakes of a lamb's tail of health.

To think that if certain events had transpired a tiny bit differently,
it could have been the interlude of movement,
it could have been the interlude of stillness,
could've been the twilight of superstition,
could've been the dawn of reason, 
would have been the history of the beginning,
if not the beginning of history.

At any rate, back then they said soon
it will be a time for the best,
it will be a time for the worst,
it will be the session of passion,
it will be the session of chastity,
it will be the debut of suspense,
it will be the swansong of reminiscence.

Well, look around.
It ain't the debut of suspense,
it ain't the bloody swansong of reminiscence,
it is the bout of voracity,
it is the bout of temperance,
it is the cadence of faith,
it is the cadence of empiricism,
it is the Jurassic of habit,
it is the Atomic of invention.

That is why I don't like making imprecise statements about durations.
But I do have a pretty sharp memory for the spatial aspects of times.
I can tell you, for instance, that
it was the best of places,
it was the worst of places,
it was the kingdom of heaven,
it was the kingdom of limbo,
it was the chamber of glass,
it was the chamber of secrets,
it was the land of the gleeful,
it was the home of the grave,
it was the epicentre of action,
it was the shell of idyll,
the ballpark of conjecture,
the bullseye of accuracy,
the right of apathy,
the left of candour,
the surface of politeness,
the depth of compassion.

Believe me, I had taken measurements.