There had always been distant dreams, but they lay below on the abyssal plain of an alternate future. It was mostly because there wasn’t a good logical reason for them. Dreams were dreams, not work, work’s what you get paid for, and so goes the generation. Loose entertainment of the hobby was enough, but it should always remain simply entertainment.
The forces over the hill are moving fast, all moving in the same direction. Regardless of who you ask, it might feel like that was the only way to go.
It wasn’t long before college was over, time had shriveled up affording one single look back into the shallow easy lagoon of nostalgia. On its bank was the failed boat, much like the second one to come and go, scuttled in the shifting perspective of time. Silently it sat, like a distant memory shared between old friends, waiting, warming in the bright guava sun of a gray winter day, lost in the picked field of another life.
In some previous reality, a plastic water bottle filled with assorted spirits had gone round and round with a canned nectar concentrate until both were empty. Warmed by this strange tidal push we were swept up into a shining delirium. Through the pines and artichokes we ran, like shadows without time. Diving through youth into an unknown life that was almost not our own. The red tractor of fate congealed on our horizon and we fell like dead birds into a room among a fog of choices, leading beyond to now. The light dimmed into a dark dream with spicy noodle food glistening at the end of the tunnel. How long would this heaven last? Without blinking we appeared sitting at a table near Kim’s kitchen. The same old white windowed room that stood looking out over the hoop houses filled with shiitake mushrooms, now gone, all of it turned into some coastal mansion. Steaming rice, salsa, noodles, meat, food in bowls, spoons in hand. A Tapestry of dragon calendars watched contentedly in our choice. The table was cluttered with boxes of cereal, cleared for each place, a personal cubicle of space for the hot bowl and aloe beverage to cool the scalded mouth.
In this same delirium we spun out of youth into separate directions until each asked by remembering “who am I, yesterday”. An adult who was once a child sitting in a room alone with only memories. The days of childhood just yesterday gone by, without even knowing where they went, leading to this. A human seeking something, happiness, wholeness, fun, pleasure, meaning, more, a life well lived and moments realized at the moment, moment to moment, time ticking by until now, again.
The relative now is here, now, now a time of continuous self-improvement, aided by the available data on digital digital demand. The fully optimized, fully contented, super commuter. One can believe a saying for a long time, but new ideas can surface between the unsaid questions raised by the same books that make good workers great.
