If things were different

[13.17] Rose: Hey, can I ask you something? [13.17] Walt: … [13.19] Rose: How do you spell IF? [13.20] Walt: You start with I and work your way to F, slowly. [13.26] Rose: Ugh! I haven’t got the patience for that [13.26] Walt: pa·tient /ˈpāSHənt/ Learn to pronounce noun plural noun: patients 1. a person receiving or registered to receive medical treatment. [13.29] Rose: My legs are tired. I want to be a patient. I want to be carried. I want to be cared for. I’ve got too much baggage [13.31] Walt: Our baggage is our strength, don’t forget that [13.34] Rose: It’s hard work being so solid, being around for so long [13.36] Walt: Moving rocks witnessing seismic waves. Liquid molten metal becoming form. In time [13.57] Rose: Close inspection makes me dizzy. I’m already lowest of the low, at ground level. Are you really ready to risk the fate of the centipede, who, when asked exactly how he crawled, shot himself? [14.26] Walt: Chiiiiillll. There’s no rush [14.32] Rose: Ok ok, so we just keep on crawling slowly slowly. N o r u s h [14.36] Walt: Yes, no rush. We’ve been on this rock, floating on shifting tectonic plates, hurtling at 66,000 mph around the sun, for as many years as a generation of centipedes have legs [14.39] Rose: How long is that? [14.39] Walt: A long time [14.40] Rose: How long? [14.42] Walt: Remember your late father Eunotosaurus Africanus? [14.42] Rose: I try not to. [14.45] Walt: Well, Eunotosaurus wasn’t to know this of course, but he was to become the ancestor of all tortoises, sea turtles and terrapins. 55 million years ago. [14.46] Rose: So he’s to blame [14.50] Walt: … Easy. What’s that Larkin poem? [14.56] Rose: They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had. And add some extra, just for you. [14.58] Walt: Yeah but.. …they were fucked up in their turn. By fools in old-style hats and coats… Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. [15.00] Rose: So even rocks have it bad [15.02] Walt: That’s not my point. [15.04] Rose: What’s your point? [15.05] Walt: It wasn’t Eunotosaurus’s fault, he had a father too, and he had a father too, and he had a father too. The line runs so deep even the roots and rocks feel it. To untangle it all would all be require the creation of a new world [15.06] Rose: Right back to The Beginning. [15.08] Walt: Yeah. That time when there were snails shifting their way over the earth. On their shells were patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. They were carrying the light [15.12] Rose: The light that we carry now [15.13] Walt: Exactly [15.13] Rose: For the bang [15.14] Walt: The fireworks. The splitting of time and the production of sound [15.16 ] Rose: The counter spectacle of things not happening, and then the spectacle of things happening? [15.17] Walt: Yes. Right in front of us, out the window, on the ground. From nothing, to everything [15.28] Rose: My stomach’s in knots.