More from the Recent Doctor

As I wrote previously, the new Doctor has for years been mentioning all manner of interesting things, and one of these was the Parthians. Ever heard of them? Maybe alittle if we paid close attention while studying the eastern edge of the Roman Empire but other wise, probably no. They had a huge long lasting and mighty empire to rival Rome's.

The Parthians disappeared for many of us not by *mis*-direction, but by our attention being fastened to the Roman Empire. But there the Parthian Empire was, "invisible" and shaping the eastern edge of The Glory That Was Rome. (Oddly enough, that is how a number of close up magic tricks work. Scale of the effect is all...)

So I'm left to wonder about what the Parthian Empire was like. (another item for the list of cool stuff to find out about) Human history alone, to leave natural history to one side for a moment, not to overwhelm the imagination, is TEEMING with times and places, circumstances and viewpoints. A literature somewhere between science fiction/fantasy and travel narrative could end up producing the most accurate record of human experience.

Years ago, when I was in college, a perfectly delightful professor emeritus told me about a rooftop ballroom that was atop a fancy department store that miraculously enough still existed in the downtown area. When he was a student at this same school, before WWII, it was the height of elegance to visit this place. The great big bands played there, and it was strung with lights, and it was high enough to be cool and free of bugs. When he was telling me this story, he was a kind witty palsied old man, a world expert in his specific field within English Literature, and I will always remember the way his face fell into repose as he said--"and when you were up there...you saw nothing above you but the starry sky..." It was something eternal, at least something that hadn't changed much over the decades that separated the young student from the old lion, and it lodged in my memory, that ballroom I could never see, beneath the summer stars.

After this, I had the opportunity to go downtown to the old department store. I discreetly made my way up to the very top floor and found the door to the roof. Something about violators being prosecuted was on a sign, but really, I didn't care. At the time, I felt like all would be well if I simply explained about the rooftop ballroom, and the professor's story. So I quietly shoved the door open, and peeked. It was mid afternoon of an early spring day, with clouds scudding across the sky. The roof was an expanse of gravel, level as I could see, with no suggestion of ever having been other wise. It seemed smaller than I imagined too, but isn't that always the case.

I thought of all of this again when the Parthians came up again in the defense. A similar impulse, a similar interest. A question, again, of *scale*. I like to imagine Parthians on that rooftop, the ghost of the former ballroom around them, and I like to imagine the Doctor chatting with them, getting to ask all the questions and draw out all the stories she wishes for. I will be at another table, chatting with that professor emeritus, now long dead, about matters closer chronologically but just as gone (or not) as the Empires. Maybe it would be Benny Goodman's band playing, and maybe we would all dance together eventually.