A million years ago I sat on a couch in apartment in Fort Worth where over time I watched a wide range of shows and movies.
There was The Notebook, specials about Paul Williams and Mel Brooks and the induction ceremony for The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
If I said it was magical some might say it was and then try to modify memories by saying it wasn’t real.
I’d understand that because some moments in time are so good they feel unreal and you hesitate to say your feet were on the ground because you’d miss it that much more if it disappeared.
There have been moments where I look back and tell myself it wasn’t what I thought, especially because some of the moments that came afterwards were so damn tough.
Given the amount of time that has passed and the life experiences that I have weathered I have had time to revisit and reconsider.
It was real and it was magical.
Every now and then people give me grief about echoes of the future because they say it is a ridiculous term but it is not to me.
It has meaning and that’s enough.
The funny thing about it is as a writer I’d say it is silly to push a phrase that people don’t follow but I’d probably say it isn’t clear how many people do or do not understand it.
Not as a way to try to justify its use but to share my rationale.
My words aren’t always supposed to paint a complete picture, sometimes they are supposed to give you a framework to fill in with your imagination or memories.
For example I could tell you about a couple who thought of each other as the great love of their life and who were happy just being near each other. They didn’t have to be doing anything in particular as long as they were a pair.
That may or may not give you enough details. We could provide more details about who he was and who she was and how together they could do anything.
Or we could take the echoes of the future and talk about how you could see a ten year-old running across a playground and get a sense of what they might look like when they were older.
You could take that same child and write about a conversation that surprised you by the level of maturity and say you heard something in it that made it clear they were ten but again gave you a hint of who he/she would grow up to be.
Would it be better to write about a harbinger of a time yet to come?
Maybe or maybe not.
Depends on the word flow and what kind of story you are writing.
If you focus on the couple and talk about a kiss they had being a harbinger of an amazing future I can get behind the usage, not so sure I like it for the kid.
But then again it all depends on the story because you could dress that kid story up in ways that make harbinger fit.
Or you could look at the past and say fuck that, we are only interested in the present and the future.
Or maybe that is jut me and my current mood.
Probably not as foul as it sounds but there is a harder edge. I have tried to dull it by writing here and there but I don’t know if it has worked well.
That is the beauty of living through a crisis situation. You know even if you manage it well you are going to be somewhat crazy and so are a ton of people around you.
I suppose that also ties into why I like the Emerson quote above. It makes sense to take all we have seen, heard and experienced and make use of it in a productive way.
Had a bunch of calls and conversations about what I think the future will or won’t look like. They have ranged from business, to elections to how many relationships quarantine will wreck.
I have my thoughts and ideas about all of them as well as my hopes and dreams in regards to some of them.
Uncertainty is frightening and when you don’t know what to expect sometimes you hold on tighter to what you do know.
But sometimes that holding onto what you know doesn’t make sense because it prevents you from opening your eyes to possibility.
Possibility leads to opportunity.
It is what leads you to interview for a new and better position and why you practice your situation, action, result story or stories.
But you can’t ever really know if you don’t try. Can’t know if you don’t take the risk to see if that one thing you suspect is true.
It might not be. It might be a bust.
Or it might be exactly what you thought it could be and maybe you’d learn how to fly…again.
It is why I tell fear to take my outstretched hand and come walk with me cuz I have got to know.
