"Nothing's ever yours to keep." Tom Waits
Time is moving much more quickly than the Mississippi or a drunken streetcar driver. I heard a song yesterday. I can't remember where. One of the lines said something like if you just stand still you're travelling in time. I feel that way now.
Jack was talking about time and space one day pretty recently. Einstein. Stuff over my head for the most part, being only an average student of English and Philosophy. But something about what he said clicked in my mind. I mean, what are they? Nothing, really. Concepts.
And the idea that standing on my porch, watching cars pass, kids pass on scooters, dogs and cats pass, feeling the breeze pass, hearing sirens pass and birds and words, that being privy to these things is being privy to the passage of time and space. And that, even standing still as I can, I'm a part of the passage. I'm moving, even when I'm motionless. Not just in the sense of moving through time. I'm also on a moving planet in a galaxy headed far away from its original home.
What I meant to write about here is watching New Orleans pass from my hands.
I can remember driving into this city during the summer of 1999. I can remember the way that my chest expanded with excitement when I saw the signs that read "New Orleans" and the way that my hands shook on the steering wheel as I panicked in traffic. My anxiety when I took the wrong exit and found myself headlong in a strange city. The worn brick and the peeling wood. The cracks in the asphalt. The potholes. I can still remember how foreign and mysterious and frightening it was to me that first night. I didn't want to go back out once I was settled into the hostel. Overload. I was terrified because I knew this was my new home, but it felt like terra incognita. I was so afraid. And now I can only remember that feeling. I can't recapture it. I wish I could because it was the good fear. The fear of an adventurer. The fear that pushes you to explore and to force your way through the unknown, whether it's a concrete jungle, a rainforest, or a combination of the two.
Jack was talking about time and space one day pretty recently. Einstein. Stuff over my head for the most part, being only an average student of English and Philosophy. But something about what he said clicked in my mind. I mean, what are they? Nothing, really. Concepts.
And the idea that standing on my porch, watching cars pass, kids pass on scooters, dogs and cats pass, feeling the breeze pass, hearing sirens pass and birds and words, that being privy to these things is being privy to the passage of time and space. And that, even standing still as I can, I'm a part of the passage. I'm moving, even when I'm motionless. Not just in the sense of moving through time. I'm also on a moving planet in a galaxy headed far away from its original home.
What I meant to write about here is watching New Orleans pass from my hands.
I can remember driving into this city during the summer of 1999. I can remember the way that my chest expanded with excitement when I saw the signs that read "New Orleans" and the way that my hands shook on the steering wheel as I panicked in traffic. My anxiety when I took the wrong exit and found myself headlong in a strange city. The worn brick and the peeling wood. The cracks in the asphalt. The potholes. I can still remember how foreign and mysterious and frightening it was to me that first night. I didn't want to go back out once I was settled into the hostel. Overload. I was terrified because I knew this was my new home, but it felt like terra incognita. I was so afraid. And now I can only remember that feeling. I can't recapture it. I wish I could because it was the good fear. The fear of an adventurer. The fear that pushes you to explore and to force your way through the unknown, whether it's a concrete jungle, a rainforest, or a combination of the two.
posted by Autumn at 7:49 PM
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