I drive through my hometown and back like an echo. I pass storefronts and roads and churches in an afternoon that I’ve experienced more times than I can count. It’s the same glow over the bridge and the river, but for all that’s the same, nothing is the same. The McDonald’s on the corner is right where I remember, but it’s not the same McDonald’s where I tripped and dropped my double cheeseburger. The movie theater has the same name, but it’s painted white, and there’s a line of kids looking younger than I ever did. The old strip is there, but a jiujutsu dojo is open, and six more pizza restaurants glow on the street with signs I don’t recognize. Everything is just a bit off. A little different. But the bones are there. Old and tired, just like me.
I guess this is what happens when you get older.
It’s a feeling of time. When the street has more cracks than I remember. Tree roots gnarl and twist over a sidewalk that I once rollerbladed down. The world is folding and changing, along with the wrinkles on the backs of my hands. Like imprints in the snow fading over time, what I once saw and experienced becomes buried beneath the new. The fresh. The not what I remember.
We all exist in a brief moment. Watching through a narrow window that slides across the string of events we call our lives, able to see just enough forward and then watch as our trail disappears behind us. What was once the future becomes the present, and then the past. Soon enough, the past vanishes. Invisible, just like the future you can’t see.
We ritualize this, the memories that grow fuzzy as the years stamp on. At the dinner table surrounded by friends and family, we rehash the same story about how some aunt or uncle took the wrong turn on vacation or how a cousin broke their arm riding their bike. They are memories of color, smell, and sound. Memories of places that, if you were to travel to them, would have different colors, different smells, and different sounds. The world is spinning, and all we can do is view it through the lens of a memory we have no control over.
We all have thousands of memories lost. Millions of instants pass through our vision, filtered through our brain, and then deleted from existence. You don’t remember the time you dropped your chicken nugget on the street, but remember the squirrel eating corn in the front yard. You remember the feeling of watching the one you loved in high school walking to class with someone else, but you don’t remember what clothes you were wearing.
The point I’m making isn’t very relevant. It’s something obvious and natural. Time exists, or at least, the passing of events exists. We are just along for the ride.
Falco's Words 