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Posts from the ‘revisiting old journals’ Category

Jul 18

something more still in its movement

8/21/92

There’s something about a summer evening.  It’s late August, Friday, 6pm.  I climb the face of this day as it fades from my grasping fingers.  With steady, easy strides it passes by me like a long-legged boy heading home.  This day too, like so many days before it, heads home to my memory.

How can I not be carried away with it? – back to a time before work, before responsibility.  I’m young again and spending time as children do.  Those were the years when summer lasted for as long as the school year, or so it seemed.  Every day was a free day.

But Friday was still special.

∞ ∞ ∞

5/3/93

My life seems to me like a movement of water, sometimes a tiny creek and sometimes this huge river.  Always moving toward the sea, toward something much larger, much more still in its movement.

This river slows and quickens on its own.  Often it feels like it’s stopped and then I realize that I’ve traveled ten miles further down the line than I thought.  Sometimes I move and can’t judge my own speed.

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Jul 2

Stop. Rewind. Do-over.


4/18/90

Sometimes, I just wish that my life was being played on some VCR somewhere.

Then, when I say or do something stupid, or when I say something wrong, I could just rewind the tape, and say it like I wanted to say it.

That would be great, but I’m afraid I’d spend all of my time rewinding.

«««« 

This week’s Query is all about learning from your mistakes!

Click here to see how people answered this question:

What’s something you learned The Hard Way?

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Jun 17

4 Comments

i’m getting older and still no plan

No longer child’s play: I still don’t know where I’m heading.

9/18/06

I just turned 37, which is way closer to 40 than I ever imagined myself getting.  That’s not to say that I didn’t think I’d make it to 40, it’s just to say that I’ve never imagined myself getting this old.

In reality, 37 feels about the same as 27 did.  Only older.

It’s one more example for me that life is somehow a circular thing.  No matter how far I go, how much I change or stay the same, how different my life circumstances turn out to be, I always somehow end up in the exact same place.  It’s like the Mayan theory of time passage.  So what’s the point of moving ahead, other than sheer boredom?

What I feel differently now amounts close to panic.  That is the difference between 27 and 37.  In both cases, I definitely felt the pressure of time running out.  Only now I have ten years added to that – with all the same have-nots in my life, and I still have no plan.  And it’s no one’s fault but my own.

11/2/02

Why do I feel like so much time is passing me by?  It slips like water through my fingers – cold and invisible, it drips away until there is nothing left but the memory of it.

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Related articles

Jun 15

Reflections on The Wall

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7/28/91

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It was my fourth visit, and I was surprised by the number of people there.  Dismayed, even.  But what did I expect, coming on a spring Saturday?  Twice I had gone by night, quiet, Lincoln’s stern reflection glowing off black granite.

My mother came this time and she cried.  “He used to be so funny.”  I never imagined she’d find a memory here, like so many others.  Why did it shock me so?

I found my way to the name I met my first time.  12 West, line 52.  “Hi Donald.”

There’s a man making rubbings and I follow him.  He’s so busy.  I keep following and now I steal my chance.  “Will you do one for me?”  I take pictures of the old man’s hands, rubbing pencil over paper, and in my mind, I make up a life to go with the name.

A young boy walks by with his father, and I hear him ask the question.  The father says, “Ah…jeez, well it all started…”

I turn away, with Donald’s name, climb out of the crevice, and step back into the world.

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