TOMORROW

 I like how these things bleed into one another. I guess I should have said, last blog, that I have faith in tomorrow. The only evidence I have that I will wake up in the morning is purely circumstantial: I've woken up every morning since I first woke up, excepting of course the few times I've slept past noon.

So yeah, I have faith tomorrow will arrive. What kind of tomorrow is another question entirely these days.

"Tomorrow" used to be two words, "to morrow", from 1350 to about 1650, then "to-morrow" until the early 1900s. "Morrow is from OE morgen, "morning". If you want to refer to the day after tomorrow, you can use the charming "overmorrow", just like you can say "ereyesterday" for the day before yesterday. 

There's not much to write here, because tomorrow has always been unknowable to me, and not worth much thought. Matthew 6:34: " Do not worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow will have its own worries. The troubles we have in a day are enough for one day." (NLV)  I first heard that verse as a young child and it seemed eminently sensible. It's stuck with me ever since, and it's the first thing that enters my mind whenever I try to make a plan. 

Musically, tomorrow is a common theme. My first thought is, probably predictably, Annie; I've sung "the sun will come out tomorrow" on more than one occasion. But my second thought is, I think, more interesting. It's a song in the Xhosa language of the Kalahari Desert, called Iza Ngomso ("Come Tomorrow") and the first line is oddly famiiliar : Ivula izawubuya ezulwini, "the rain will return to the cloud", i.e. "the sun will come out tomorrow...."

(The album that came from, The Drop That Contained The Sea, is firmly in my top ten albums of all time in any genre.)

I've read many stories about tomorrow. By far the most prescient of them was The Machine Stops, published by E.M. Forster in 1909. A skilled futurist can extrapolate current trends. An imaginative one can envision new technologies. But it takes genius to predict how trends and technologies will shape our attitudes and actions on an individual and especially societal level. Forster's "Machine" is not a phone or a tablet, but anybody with a phone or a tablet will recognize their machine in the story. 

And the next topic is "integrity". If I have any, I'll see you....tomorrow.