Transition. The dictionary definitions are:
1. Passage from one form, state, style, or place to another.
2.a. Passage from one subject to another in discourse.
2.b. A word, phrase, sentence, or series of sentences connecting one part of a discourse to another.
3. Music
3.a. A modulation, especially a brief one.
3.b. A passage connecting two themes or sections.
4. Genetics A point mutation in which a pyrimidine is replaced by another pyrimidine, or a purine is replaced by another purine.
5. Sports The process of changing from defence to offence or offence to defence, as in basketball or hockey.
6. A period during childbirth that precedes the expulsive phase of labour, characterised by strong uterine contractions and nearly complete cervical dilation.
Uh… childbirth aside (shudders at the dictionary definition; apologies if you are eating your tea!) and I’ll give sport a wide berth too (Sorry!). And genetics is another area that I’ll miss in this post, but if you were wondering a ‘pyrimidine’ is any of a group of organic compounds having a single six-member ring in which the first and third atoms are nitrogen and the rest are carbon. Pyrimidines include the bases cytosine, thymine, and uracil, which are components of DNA and RNA. Pyrimidine rings are also components of several larger compounds, such as thiamine and some synthetic barbiturates. Thought I’d add that in case you mistakenly thought I was referring to the friendly inhabitants of the planet Pyrimid (and not to be confused with the polyhedra found in Egypt and other places).
Now, that brings me nicely to where I wanted to be right now. It’s good how things work out that way, isn’t it? Imagine a brief interlude of music now, and then I’ll continue!
♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♫♫♫
OK, I’ll give music a miss too!
So, that leaves a passage. Yes, I know that it also leaves a word or phrase connecting one part of a discourse to another, but that was the whole reason for the first three hundred words or so in this post. Back to the passage.
Oh, matron.
No! No!
This is meant to be a serious post, but I’m not in a serious mood, so goodness knows how it will turn out. Let’s see, shall we?
I watched an episode of one of my all time favourite TV shows earlier today, the magnificent Smallville, which has now sadly ended. The series, not the episode; but the episode has also ended now, otherwise I’d still be watching it, and not typing this. I’m going round the houses a bit, but there is a point.
The episode was about the last day of high school, and one of the students wanted the days of school to continue. He went away and built a full scale replica of the school in an old abandoned warehouse, as you do, and started to collect fellow students from the ‘most likely to’ page in the high school year book with the intention of keeping them in this twilight zone school for the rest of their days. Eventually, they were saved by our hero, and the scene changed to them leaving the real school for the last time. They weren’t very pleased, and basically, that was that.
When I was at school, I don’t think I had a last day. I mean I had a day where I went to school for the last time, but I have no idea whether it was a Monday, Wednesday or whatever. I seem to remember walking away from the school, and basically, that was that in my case too. I didn’t have any tearful goodbyes with people I went to school with. I didn’t get asked to sign anyone’s year book. We didn’t have year books, but if we did, I doubt that anyone would have asked me to sign their copy anyway. They may have done, but I hated school with such a passion I was glad to get out of there. Having said that, you’d think that feeling about the place as I did, the last day would have been a little more special, but it wasn’t.
Thinking back, I think that I would have liked there to have been a final day. The final day of school when we all finished at the same time, and the chance to say ‘bye’ to some of the classmates who I had endured the last so many years with. It wasn’t all their fault that I didn’t enjoy school, and the transition from school life into real life is an important one that should be remembered fondly, if only for the rite of passage.
When I left my first job to start my second job, I left on the Saturday lunchtime and started the following Monday morning. The work was the same, I had moved to a different company. Although I had a last day at the first place, I didn’t have a break, so feel that there wasn’t much of a transition between the two companies. And for the colleagues who I left behind that day, for them it was business as usual. My leaving didn’t matter. Hey ho!
When I was made redundant from my second job, my last day was actually a week and a half later than the day I left, but with holidays I could finish early. No fanfare for this last day either, although I was given a hastily arranged bottle of wine or two as I had let slip that morning that I was going. I was perfectly happy to ‘slip out the back door’ but at least at this company they thought it was a nice gesture to thank me for the sixteen years of service I had provided. I left this job on a Monday, so I can say that I do have a final day feeling here. Sad, but true.
It appears that everything I have done have merely ‘blended’ together with the passage of time. There is nothing that says ‘this part of my life ended here, and that one there’. I’m not sure if these endings would have been beneficial to me in the long run, but they would certainly have helped me as milestones when I think back. Black and white or grey… which is better? I don’t know.
I do know that I have only really experienced the grey. I’m still happy now so it isn’t all bad. I feel good everyday, for some things, if not all things. But every now and then, I stop and try to think of times in my life that define certain periods, but can only remember ‘vaguely’ and not ‘clearly’.
I find it funny the things that come to mind when you are watching your favourite TV shows. They certainly, at times, have ways of making you think deeper than the tale they are telling. Or perhaps that’s just me…
This first image is of the Witch Head Nebula. A gas cloud that is illuminated by the supergiant star Rigel, in Orion. Rigel, by the way is the sixth brightest star in the sky. And looking at Orion, where Betelgeuse is top left, Rigel is bottom right. Can you see why the nebula got it’s name? Only kidding! I think it’s pretty obvious!
As we’ve had a witch, why not go for a wizard? The Wizard Nebula at first glance doesn’t seem to look like anything, apart from a swirl of colour, but then the magic appears! You can notice a wizard casting a spell with arms held wide open, and he is wearing a pointed hat to boot! Well, that’s what I see… German born British astronomer
This nebula is called the Tarantula Nebula, and it provides another indirect link to the Seventeenth Century. The nebula contains the remnants of a star that went supernova in 1987; the closest supernova to Earth to be observed since the invention of telescopes in the 17th century. Hans Lippershey (1570 – 1619) is credited as the inventor of the telescope in 1608.
