It’s what we older folks wish we had more of. Young children, especially last month were lamenting its slowness. Their parents felt it rushing like the wind in the wake of something massive passing by with unmatched speed and power. Despite its motion through space, it has no mass. It has been called God’s way of keeping everything from happening at once. Of course I’m ranting about time.
I can’t say for sure what time is made of, perhaps memories. But if that is true then time might be very feeble indeed. Three days ago I was considering what to blog about. I have grown weary of the lecturing and ranting about how December made me edgy. I have been dealing with what I considered to be the highest possible themes and imagining that my musings are an essential beacon at the beginning of everyone’s week. Truth be told, Roadwalker is a writing exercise that I share and other people are kind enough to indulge me by reading. So while I was vacuuming three days ago and considering what to write about I tried to check what time it was and then gave a frustrated huff. My watch battery died several days ago and I haven’t worn it since.
I thought then that I would blog about how I’ve always had the ability to keep track of time in my head but still how much I love wearing a wristwatch and how vital it was at the radio station to know precisely what time it was to catch the ABC network feeds. I thought about Peter Fonda in Easy Rider throwing away his wristwatch in his iconic and rather lame film as a symbol that he was no longer tied to established society. I had an idea for a blog and I had some building blocks to hold it up.
The next day I was wrapping up another vacuuming job. I remembered vacuuming the previous day. I remembered what room I was in and that I had thought of a blog topic. And that was all I remembered. The topic, the wristwatch that I still wasn’t wearing, motorcycles and good rock music, all gone. I began to compose a new blog in my head right there about how my memory was going the way of the brown pigment in the hair on my head. What had happened to my past? Once forgotten, did it exist anymore?
I don’t know when the first blog topic came back to me, but probably when I when I tried to check the time on my bare wrist. And then did time re-establish itself? I don’t know. Memories are a funny thing. I can still hear the school bell in my head from kindergarten almost 40 years ago. I can remember the words to songs my class sung in elementary school. I remember insignificant details about all kinds of things I’ve done all my life. But I can’t remember how many times I’ve asked one of my kids the same question or told Prajna the same lame joke. And I am pretty sure that I used to be able to think of a writing idea and be confident that I would not forget it. Now, I’m not so sure. I have been jotting notes down more often lately to preserve ideas. Sometimes I lose the notes though.
If all my past is made of is my memories then my past is dust motes in a shaft of light. Lucky for me I can record silly little memories here on this blog. If you read back to when I first started blogging a year and a half ago a lot of it is little snippets of my past. I might go back to telling stories like that some more as long as I can tie them into what is happening today. I want those dust motes to form little bricks and not be lost as time blasts on.
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