Dan's Papers - Issue #5 - April 27, 2007

When people think about global warming, they think, if they are young enough, that maybe they ought not to have children, that maybe things will get very very bad here on the planet before anybody can do anything about it. They hope against hope that they don't live to see the day when all this happens. And they hope, even expect, to be part of the effort to keep it from happening.

When people who are over the age of 50 think about global warming, they read the predictions and think, what the hell, when all this happens I'll probably be dead. 2050? They're worried about the sea level in 2050? I'll be a hundred years old on a ventilator in 2050, if I'm here at all. It's not MY problem.

What I think about global warming is -- damn it, this is going to really screw things up for me later.

You see, I think I am coming back. What I wound up with a long time ago, when I first considered all the options, was reincarnation. I'd die and go up to heaven, but it wasn't exactly, I should say it isn't exactly, heaven. It's more like a happy place for souls to go after the body dies. There's a bench to sit on and wait for what happens next. Then they call you in, ask you how you made out as Dan Rattiner or whomever you had been for that time and then they take out a file and look through it and give you a grade. It could be pretty good, or excellent, or fair, or you've really got to this better -- they don't share the details of their grading system there -- and then they give you a number and tell you to go sit down on the bench again.

Sometime later, your number is called, you go up again and they tell you who you are going to be next. If it's a person, you come back here to join up with it when it is born. And if it's a dog, well, you get to be that dog. Or it could be a dandelion, a crocodile or a dolphin. Whatever it is, you come back and live out that life and then go back again. And this just keeps going on and on.

Now I don't make a big deal about believing in reincarnation, but it works for me. I think I am a soul participating in the universe. I think I can work for good. I think I get another try when this one's done.

But now I think, with global warming, it's going to be pretty bad coming back here. I will not remember that I had been here before, of course. So maybe what would be thought of as bad from today's perspective will just be what it is when I get back.

"Gonna be a nice day?"

"That's what they say. The purple smelly sideways rain is supposed to let up at two p.m. for about an hour. We'll get sunshine."

If I come back rather quickly, say about 2290, it does seem to me that some of the things I might see would spark some bad memories. The Montauk Lighthouse lying on its side. A large body of water called Lake Agawam Ocean. A fully intact underwater castle called Ira Rennert's House.

"I think I remember something about this."

"Just put on the rest of the snorkeling gear."

"I think I've been here before. Maybe...... Nah."

So I give up and think of something else. Can't be breaking the "no memory of past life" reincarnation rule, of course.

So what I'm hoping is that, when I come back, it will be All Over. The year will be 2500 and I will be a fish. High above -- my mommy told me never to go there -- will be a place where there is no water whatsoever and it is 140 degrees out.

"What they've got up there is called 'air'," she has told me. "And it's a killer. It will burn your lungs, er, gills. You have to get back down here fast. And other than that, there is absolutely nothing up there. The place is barren. Nothing to do or see. Just this damn hot air and some terrible thunder and lightning storms."

From outer space, those of my fellow souls who have been assigned to creatures with superior intelligence living on other planets -- temporarily assigned, of course -- will look out with their telescopic eyes and see the earth rising on the horizon and they will say how blue and serene it is. Their grandparents had told them it used to be blue with lots of green, but in recent years, the green has faded away. Also it's gotten very hot.

"There's been talk we ought to lease a flying saucer to go there on vacation next spring, but I don't know. It looks so boring. And there's no life on it. I think we ought to go to Barkeloptic and stay in the bay at one of those resorts in the coral reef instead. You think?"