Time Immemorial

How we come to be who we are

Hey! When do you grow up?

In the blink of an eye or a sudden flash of lightning, years go by before we can count just how far away the storm is waiting.

“One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four—”

RUMBLE

“Four miles! It’s four miles away!”

And then those summertime memories dim. The lightning bugs themselves becoming harder and harder to find. What was once a step into a magical realm of glowing lights is now condemned to the softer touch that comes with population decline.

There’s no structure to it all if we don’t make it ourselves.

Broken Light

A day and a life never breaks cleanly into chapters. We bleed into the night and suffer through tragedies in the dark. In that wait for dawn, there is often no end. Absurd perseverance that forges the will to stumble through yet another hour.

And when a new game is underfoot, if one ever is, you can be sure the cards are as dirty as the money as the hands who dealt them.

What’s remarkable is less my inclination to describe the rational nature behind apathetic nihilism, and more the ways in which time goes on regardless of how well the argument against doing so truly is.

Nature runs its course whether we want it to or not.

That was always a part of the bargain that rubbed me the wrong way. Any man-made apocalypse would be devastating, surely. However, Earth has survived worse. Our geological history shows how the old bones made of rock and dirt are no stranger to extinction.

The existential fear is not the end of the world, but the end of ourselves. Or perhaps the loss of the world we once knew. The fading memories of the end of summer, running through fields of fireflies.

Saeculum

Time is my enemy.

I really had that thought. I looked out the window of the old van and tried to make sense of the blurred images zooming by.

Sometimes I’d play that game where I watched an imaginary friend. A little guy who could turn into a ball of electricity and ride the guard rails running along all the highway. He’d jump from car to car as needed, and kept me entertained during the long hours of the ride.

“Are we there yet?”

One of my sisters would annoy Dad with an incessant question. It all happened so slowly to us back then. The way three and a half hours was so significant.

“Well…” Mom would trail off, her eyes darting over at Dad to see if she should answer or if he wanted to offer his own explanation.

“We’re still two hours from home.” He looked angry. He always looked angry. He kept his eyes on the road and truly cared about us, but all we could feel was a frantic energy. The nervous desire to finish his current task. It felt like he wished none of us were there. “We’ll stop at McDonald’s.”

A peace offering.

Or maybe he was just hungry.

“I did have to use the bathroom.” Mom would look at each of us and put on a show of mocked laughter. She loved us dearly, but it’s hard to really put into words how that only added to the pressure of every expectation contained within the car — or the old van to be more precise.

My sister would quiet down after that. There wasn’t much in the way of a choice. The music on the worn speakers becoming louder as a certain song demanded more attention.

A lost art in the age of Spotify and internet radio is the dance between physical stations. AM or FM, a long drive meant scanning for new information. Any complaints were soon drowned out when a preferred playlist was finally found.

It’s in those moments when I discovered skillful introspection. Tracing thoughts from their origin to an unlikely end and then back again. Tracking every synapse to catalogue the way every reaction led to another story.

And I would do that over and over again.

When I lost the trail, I’d force myself to focus until I picked it up again. I felt compelled to catalogue every thought and every emotion. A deep-seated fear in my soul made me care so much about losing the person I had been.

It was on such a journey that I came to the ultimate conclusion.

Time is my enemy.

We were returning home after a trip to the cousins. Well, to me it was a trip to the cousins. To my parents, I’m sure it was an obligation to visit their own. A reasonable expectation that was reluctantly never properly explained to the next generation.

As for me and my childhood, I had two or three days to spend with a friend. That was how I thought of the trip. Making the most of every moment together, I felt a kinship I never had at home.

You see, outside of the cousins, I only really had two friends. The imaginary one I could watch when we drove far away and our pet cat who taught me how to socialize — something that explains many of my worst personal habits.

All the while, I tried to make sense of who I was with that same process of rocking back and forth in my mind. Chasing a logic in the twists and turns that guide all decisions.

The conclusion I discovered is the mantra repeated.

Time is my enemy.

Thrice, perhaps simply as a plea to influence the dice.

No matter the hustle or the rigged game, I condemned myself to the memory.

For if all is lost in what we know, I will always be assured in what I remember.

That was what I decided.

That is what was.

Storied Memories

Perhaps in some ways I’m just odd.

Well, that’s obvious to a certain degree, but I mean in terms of my relationship with time.

Mom calls me her Peter Pan child because I hated my birthday. From a very young age I was acutely aware of the fleeting nature of our lives. Death is always at the door and there is nowhere we can hide.

The above short story is an embellishment of a real memory.

Those same cousins I mention in passing would likely remember my ambition in storytelling from an incredibly young age.

They may even remember chasing fireflies together as our parents laughed into the evening. A storm rolling in as a long day invited us to bed.

The problem, as I see it, is I still have trouble accepting that part of myself.

To this very day.

Until next time,
JMB