ALettertoYear2100
Dear you,
Are you wearing pajamas? I do not mean to begin this letter by getting personal.I was just wondering if you people leave the house anymore. Somthing that seems to be increasingly unnecessary these days, A hundard years ago.
Are you six-feet-six? Are you fly-fishing on Mars? Are you talking on the cell phone? We are, usually.
As lovers leaving lovers say. By the time you read this,I'll be gone. Or posibbly I won't.Given the way life is being prolonged these days. I, with my pig's liver , titanium hips and knees,artifical heart,thranplanted kidney and reconstracted DNA,could write this letter in my centry and pick it up in yours.
I write you in a dead winter from a summer village by the Atlamtic Ocean. The last of houseflies beats its body against the window,through which I watch the tremors of a berry trees and the shorn stoic trees.
Afternoon lowers on evening,the sky is the color of unpublished silver. A Cole Porter song, In the still of the night, goes throught my head. I do not know why.
We are generally content, generally at peace, generally optimistic, and with good reason.We are generally rich,more people have homes theirs own.We are generally healthy, thanks largely to remarkbale advances in medicine.People who died of certain dieases even 30 years age are rountinely saved today.
In short,we are generally OK in spire of notable low spots and areas of significant concern. Our movies are mostly silly. Our books? Mostly small.The quality of our culture criticism is generally so low that one can not tell how good or bad any others is.But in lierature, at least, it is highly unlikly that any writer toured as a heavyweigh in our era or make it to the ring in yours.Movies that once were judged by normal artistic criteria are now valued by the amount of money they make over a weekend. For your horrified amusement, see if u dig up something called"Scream" or "The Blair With Project".
We enlarge and expand. we have recently found out that the entired universe is expanding more than we had initially believed.We build, invent and discover at a peace that is dizzing for us,perhaps turtle footed for you.
I wonder how far you have progressed.I wonder if you figured out how to make the best use of the past. I see you looking back at us.You see us looking out of at you.Because we can imagine one another, we constitute each other's dreams.
Outside,the air is cold and deep. The moom hangs in a fingernail of light. The clouds conspire and retreat to reveal your strats and ours. Come. Walk with me in the chill still of the night.
Yours,
Roger Rosenblatt