A time for everything

When I was younger, I never knew how to be "cool". It eluded me. Escaped me. It was like a formula that I did not know or understand. I would look at each piece: the clothes, the walk, the mannerisms, how they talked (especially to the opposite sex), which sports they would play, how they played and tried to add it all up. To sum it up inot one big equation. But it never came out right, never made sense. The end result of the equation was not equivalent to what I believed it to be. This caused great confusion, though not at the time. Apathy was too busy plaguing my lifestyle for much anything to have an effect. It was just another thing that I did not understand that became cast into the growing (and still growing) pile of things that I cannot figure out or do not make sense to me. And when one is young that pile is huge (though the youth have no idea how big that pile can grow, and continue to grow).

Perhaps that is why I remeber so few things from my childhhod. Like most, my memory is hazy (putting it softly (such ambigious adjectives dominate our language)) from events happening in my childhhood, but, perhaps, even more so than most. Family members whom are younger than I am (by a year or two), or are just a tad bit older bring up memories from our shared childhood that I have no recollection of. For all I know they could have never happened and all their story-telling is just a jest to see how much they can make me believe actually did or did not happen. But I have known these people for quite some time and do not believe they have the creative capability or ambition to stretch a joke that far (plus, from the stories I have been told so far, they are not all that creative or far-fetched in the first place. I mean which middle-classed American childhood does not have the memory of an ice-cream truck driving through their neighborhood playing that all too familiar song that still comes back after childhood is long over, entering other memories.)

Everything before the age of twelve, thirteen, even fourtenn is, at least somewhat blurred to me. But that is not being entirely true. "Everyone speaks in half-truths, partial truths." Making that oath of "the whole truth and nothing but..." an impossible task to begin with. Looking back now I can see many moments: finding out about words reserved for parents and using them profusely, the first crush, counseling for a divorce that was unneeded (the counseling, not the divorce), the weird kid who would eat things off the ground if someone dared him to, the park next to the school, and many other things having no significance.

Memories, doing what memories do best: growing dimmer and dimmer by the light that is cast by our present, relatively recent past, and the ever-expanding present (for the young), but is there a point when it all becomes reversed, when time flips situations around making life run backwards, in a way? Events that occured long ago and believed to be lost, forgotten, suppressed, lied about, things in which no one else knew about, whos only witness was you and you alone hold that memory which comes back into focus after what seems like and endless amount of time has passed. Now, the past, instead of becoming farther and farther away, turns its head and to be nearer to you, to be close to you, to haunt you. This point of change in role in time instead of being a bringer of better things becomes a reminder things past happens when the time ahead of a person is less than the time all ready lived. There is something about the half-way point of a journey or test or race that is relieving or terrifying, depending on the situation, rejuvinating and depressing, helping you to take that next step or to turn the page or making you fearfull of it. The half-way point can give one strength because you think,"I have all ready made it to the half-way mark, I have all ready ran half the course and I am still here so if I am capabale of completing the first half than I am capabale of doing the second half as well." The sheer momentum of this thought can push people to the finish line or desired end. But in other cases it is the opposite. People see the mid-point as the beginning of the end. The relatively recent past becomes more and more insignificant because at this point because most of your story has been written, how much of a difference can it make to write anything more? Everybody knows how the ending will be (except in those rare and extraordinary occasions). Horizons that used to be so wide because you could say,"In ten to fifteen to twenty to fourty years, I will do this," now begin to narrow and not be cast so wide. Past memories begin to creep, as if to attack, "Rest heavy on thy Bossom," and one tries to see the over arching line to their life. They look back to see a certain memory and its significance as if it only existed to lead them to this moment, this point in the "then" future. As if when it was happening you understood completely why everything was happening the way it did and why things fell into place or fell apart as they did. As if this moment is for some future moment, still unforeseen.

But with life, there is mid-point, no halw-way mark. For we have no way of knowing how far our story will reach past us. How are words will impact others and how many things of ours (though not initially ours) others will choose to pick up or forget about. Our things will lose us leaving them without a history should one pick it up without knowing who we are. It will be as if our possesion will go through a rebirth. We may last on through our posterity, which is the most often used and most concrete way of passing ourselves on and for us to live past our lives, giving our eye color and shape to another or perhaps one of our most used phrases or gestures that passes our lips and moves through our bodies without notice or effort. One does not know how long one will out last one's self. Paintings begin to leave lasting impressions on people only after their death, authors never see any of their works published but years later, kids are studying their words, buildings outlast the architect, and people farmers feed live longer than the farmers with the soil they toiled giving them their rest in the end.

I do not know if I believe the things I write, I just write. If it sounds good at the time, I write. How many things there are that we do because of its time and place. "Everything has its time to be believed."

I missed the eclipse and the Geminids. Damn it. All ready preparing for next year. Or this year. And I cannot wait for 2014 either. Eclipse, here I come (or you come, more accurately). Happy new year. Make it a good one.

-anthony