You're On In Five Minutes...

"You look nervous."

"I am. A little. Any last words of encouragement before I go out that door and embarrass myself?"

"Well, I assume you've done all the necessary preparations and..."

"I don't know about all of them."

"Alright then, what I mean is, I guess you've done your best to get ready for this."

"I'd like to think I have, but I must admit, I did lose my focus from time to time."

"Everyone does. Anyway, you're as ready as you're ever going to be."

"Ever?"

(smiles slightly) "It's time..."

She remembers the two rules. She remembers writing them down every day for months until she was sure she'd never forget them. And, she never did. Never forgot.

But, she did ignore them from time to time.

1. Know thyself
2. To thine own self be true

The door opens and she knows that it was never about the great wide world, the universe, the social interactions... 

Through the door she carries all she ever needed. All that ever mattered.

She goes through naked and alone.

She goes through ready.

You’ve been giving up things for years to get here. I dont think I even understood that. How does a man decide in what order to abandon his life?

Last passage from No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

The nth Iteration

“It's a life's work to see yourself for what you really are and even then you might be wrong. And that is something I don't want to be wrong about.”

Every day brings another chance to nail it down, to get it right. And when it's clear that you've veered too far off course, or that the wheels have come off of the wagon, tomorrow brings another chance to redefine yourself completely.

Or does it?...

“You think when you wake up in the mornin' yesterday don't count. But yesterday is all that does count. What else is there? Your life is made out of the days it's made out of. Nothin' else. You might think you could run away and change your name and I don't know what all. Start over. And then one mornin' you wake up and look at the ceilin' and guess who's layin' there?”

No matter how much forgetting you do, or think you've been able to do, there come those times, maybe in the middle of the night after waking from a deep sleep, or maybe during a break at work when you've allowed your mind to wander, when forward movement all but stops and momentum brings that trail of debris you've been dragging behind you forth and slaps you right in the back with it. And that either lays you out flat or knocks you forward, getting you moving again.

Drag it behind you long enough, and eventually it will wear down, surface layers rubbed off and replaced by slightly less unattractive ones. Gone from your view, but rubbed onto the road. And you're not the only one who has traveled that road, nor is it closed to future travelers. Maybe those future travelers can trace the remnants back to you, maybe they can't. But, either way you slice it, you've been sloppy.

Do sons deserve to bear the sins of their fathers?

"Deserve's got nothin' to do with it..."

There's always going to be a reckoning.

1st two quotes from "No Country For Old Men" by Cormac McCarthy
3rd quote from the film "Unforgiven"

Do I Know You?

In another life, I had a wife, a house and a neurotic dog.

Journeys across the cerebral cortex reveal real connections between the present and the past, but travels back in time always see me entering the life of a different person. Surely, that person must be dead now. It's clear that some part of him was preserved and transported into the future and now occupies a small region of my consciousness. However, control is never an issue and he remains a guest doomed to roam the hallways and corridors only to poke his head out once in awhile from the shadows to remind me of various things. Particularly, of the consequences. Always with the consequences.

It's unbalanced. We can travel back in time and witness and feel, but we can never interact with the past. Yet, our past selves travel to the future all the time and have a direct influence on our present. In fact, if we're to grow as people, we require this. Some of us have found ways to close those portals, but most have to live with the connections.

As for me... lately I've been a bit obsessed with looking back through time and wondering if I didn't just arrive here in the present in some unexplainable fashion, as if there's a disconnect back there somewhere. I see that guy with the wife, the house and the neurotic dog...

But, I don't think we know each other.