A Look Down the Timeline

"Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia. . .You just use the future to escape the present."

          --John Green, Looking for Alaska

We are stuck in time. Every moment of every day is a singular, all encompassing event which will blink out of existence with the tick of the seconds. They don't carry over, these precious moments, and we can never get them back. At the very least, we can think back on them, but in that, waste the present moment with nostalgia. How desperate it is to seek something that has already gone. Instead, the world teaches us, we must always look forward to what we want rather than what we already have. That desire never seems to cease, so we never cease dreaming of what is to come. The ever-renewable resource of imagination flows from us so that we don't have to face any unpleasantness, even now. In Halloween's shadow we rush to ready Christmas. As the semester winds down, every homework-filled afternoon is spent dreaming of winter break. Without even thinking about it we escape to the future.

Just as I do standing in my back yard.

The chill seeps into my bones as I juggle between feet, forced to stand as all of the outdoor chairs have been safely stacked in the corner, cowering away from the rain. The impending storm hangs heavy in the sky and seems to growl as it bears down on me, the sky choking on grey clouds until I am left without ally, facing such a beast. The dramatic turn in the weather has got me bundled up and feeling drowsy as the winter usually does, but the cool air that reaches the back of my neck and prickles my skin down to my shoes leaves me alert. I turn my gaze downward and notice a patch of vibrant decay. A flower, curling in, having turned a mottled brown color. I shiver just looking at it.

 

"I...notice a patch of vibrant decay."

(Field notes Oct. 30)

 

"It'll come back," I say to no one in particular.

It'll come back. . . The soft frost sleeping on the grass will melt into supple spring dew when the first morning rays crest the horizon. Newly made nests fill the branches of reanimated trees and will ring with hungry birdsong. Waves of fragrance from honeysuckle will beacon dopey honeybees to seek its sweet taste, shaking off the sleep of the winter. The lithe drip of bleeding hearts will grace the soil that can lay dormant no longer. Then that gentle sunlight will blanket innocent buds that kiss widespread leaves. As spring sets in the world will take on a kinder spirit, filled with gentle blues and golden tints, a place distilled in pure sunlight. Yes, it will all come back.

But first it must die. The emaciated tree looks at me with gaunt eyes as I avert my gaze of the wilting flower. "Dying," the wind hisses at me through long-clinging leaves. It makes the hair on my arms stand up for more than one reason to hear a call as lonely as such. I rock back and forth on the loose floorboards of my time-weathered deck. I slip into hallows left from footsteps that no longer can be heard. I scuffle my shoes on dark stains left from over ripe plums that ooze down throughout the summer and plague the ground with a sickeningly sweet sap. Now that's just a memory.

 

"The emaciated tree looks at me with gaunt eyes..."

(Field notes Oct. 27)

"It wasn't always like this," I say to myself. 

It was different. It was something better. There were shadowed patterns like lace on the ground, broken up by spilling sunlight that was too heavy to be held on leaves. The fragrance of summer was carried on the breeze; freshly cut grass, blooming flowers, burgers on the grill. The ballet of butterflies floated between full branches and kept in time to the distant serenade of the ice cream trucks. The plums that practically dripped from the tree littered the ground. There were almost as many there as the plethora we'd picked to make jam, the warm aroma of which had ruminated in the kitchen for days. I couldn't help but think that we were like plums if hearts were like seeds. The symphony of summer carried on in the style of a peaceful river, lovely, but unable to be captured, unable to be stopped. 

I can't help but chuckle, thinking that whilst standing in the dry riverbed of summer. It can all be stopped. Just never in the way we think. That moment is gone. Every one of them I can recall. But so is this one now.

Maybe I seek tomorrows in the gullible hope that there will be more time. Less to think back on to steal from the moment, less to look forward to to distract me and more to fill the space of the now. There will always be the feeling of nostalgia though, it is the malady of those constantly seeking greener pastures--we'll never see how green the ones we're in are. Maybe we need to be able to look backward and forward to understand where it is we are, because the spring that will be is going to turn into the summer that once was, and every fall I'll feel this way, as though I stand at the brink of oblivion--hoping for something that is not here. But, maybe every moment is a moment worthy of reflection and romanticizing.

I can't think of a perfect moment. One that does not lend itself to either nostalgia--because those are the ones that we don't notice, we're too busy enjoying them in all of their fleeting glory.

Wouldn't it be a lovely life to always feel that way? Isn't it a lovely life?

 

 

Work Cited

Green, John. Looking for Alaska. New York: Dutton Books, 2005. pg. 54. Print.