I’m that Tired Guy, the one who daydreams in technicolor and speaks in black and white. I’m that Tired Guy, wavering between the past and the present like a butterfly caught in a languid summer breeze.
Time to babble on.
Lately I’ve been making egg salad sandwiches for work lunches. I blend some yellow mustard with pepper and light mayo and mix it with a bunch of hard-boiled eggs to a fine consistency. Add two pieces of challah bread (not toasted), sometimes a small slab of mozzarella or swiss and then I’m right as rain.
Most days it’s just a lunch.
Most days.
But once in awhile it’s the whisper of a memory tugging at my consciousness, something only glimpsed from an oblong angle as if trying to remember a flat plane of glass reflecting a four dimensional rainbow.
In reality it’s time travel.
For time is nothing without reality (or is that reversed?), although a world without end is both timeless and limitless…otherwise it wouldn’t have an end right? But it does have a beginning.
Egg Shen said it best.
“See? That was nothing. But that’s how it always begins. Very small.”
(More egg salad.)
I believe in time travel. It’s not just possible, it’s probable! And it happens every day, in every corner, during smoke breaks, in bored meetings (in board rooms, no less!), under the sheets, in the shower, on the pot (smoking or otherwise), driving, flying, training, boating, slipping, sliding and the nearer your destination the more you just slip, slide and…off you go!
No laws of physics to break, no paradoxes to right (or wrong), no bathroom slip ups and flux capacitors and quite frankly neither relative dimensions or space have much to do with it. Besides I never really thought much of my relatives having to do with space other than occupying it, blowing air and adding their nuances to the cosmic miasma. But I do think well of my relatives, worry not!
Again, the babble on.
I’m on an egg roll tonight!
(Yep, the egg again. I promise, I’ll get to a point eventually.)
So how do you get there? Or, maybe more appropriately, how do you get when?
Everybody does it differently. You just have to be in the right spot.
If you want me, you can find me
Left of center, off of the strip
In the outskirts, in the fringes
In the corner, out of the grip
And the spot is relative (damn those cousins!) because we’re not just talking about physical locality with longitudes and platitudes, filibusters and ghost busters or lips like sugar. Oh no. It’s about bending pretzels, drinking zen, bubbling mirth, channeling chicken soup (with rice!) and justifying your love. It’s those spaces in between, the small moments that are so long you almost wish you were here but really you’re there because you can be in both places at once, gliding, fading, finding, winding and shifting into a higher platform that no iPhone app could possibly contain.
Time travel is about knowing your story, and remembering everyone and everywhere and everything you might have been, or still could be.
And you never have to be alone, unless you want to, and whenever you go to wherever it lies it’s a fact whoever is there is whatever you brought with you.
“Your weapons, you will not need them.”
Failure is only as permanent as you allow it to gnaw on your memory’s bones. The good news is you still grow from it all the same. Remember wisdom comes from experience be it good, bad, indifferent or just a one-night stand gone awry. Just try to leave your cash at home for the next time.
Any failure in that cave is YOUR perception, YOUR reflection of events both marred and crystallized a million fold to such an excruciating clarity you never really know exactly what happened, only what you thought transpired behind the veil of youth and inexperience and dime store wisdom. And believe me drinking DOESN’T help.
Are you looking for answers
To questions under the stars?
Well, if along the way
You are grown weary
You can rest with me until
A brighter day and you’re okay
But you know what? I’ll always be there for you, with the good and that bad and those indifference.
That’s what friends do.
It’s what we are.
It’s why we’re here.
For you.
Did I reveal any secrets tonight? Have I uncovered the mysteries of a universe dwarfed by the people in it?
Honestly, probably not because I’m about as wise as you were yesterday, and a day late to boot.
But one thing I do know, and that’s this: time travel exists, and it’s possible.
How do I know?
Because I just looked in on my two sons sleeping peacefully and I smiled that special smile all parents share.
See? Such a small thing, which is how things start anyway.
And that’s all I need.
G’night folks.
Peter Hartog - Official Site 