FORWARD TO THE PAST | redclaydiary.com

Hear Jim’s 4-minute podcast on Youtube: https://youtu.be/E0qfacXrnzg

or read his transcript below:

Life, actually…

FORWARD TO THE PAST

Doing time Down South. That’s what you and I are equally good at. We are doing time.

Traveling forward through time is so easy. All I have to do is keep breathing and watch out for meteorites. I can time-travel for decades with very little effort.

Jumping ahead in time, into unknown futures, is almost as easy. I can grab a book that takes place day after tomorrow and immerse my imagination into a possibility or two. Leaping forward is not quite as realistic as living one day at a time, but it does excite the imagination, it does take me away from humdrum now and then. And sometimes humdrum requires distraction, just to keep the necessary balances.

Traveling backward in time is exciting, too. In fact, I have learned that living in the past is a safe and secure exercise. The Past is the safest place to be, especially for avoidance-experts like myself.

Here at my bookshop, my Museum of Fond Memories, my Cathedral of Books…here, I can dip into any past that ever was. Or I can dip into imagined pasts that never were. What choices I can make!

For instance, the first object I see this morning is a 1951 high school yearbook. This yearbook was incredibly important to the student who owned it in 1951.

As high school experiences faded into the past, as 1952 encroached, the 1951 yearbook remained solid proof that youth and experience and experimentation once existed. As life edged forward, piling year upon year, at least that 1951 yearbook collected dust and preserved memories as best it could.

Every decade or so, it could be dusted off, pages could be flipped, dedications and signatures and times good and bad could be reconsidered.

And, at last, some time after all memory is spent, this 1951 yearbook is discarded by survivors and winds up in a thrift bin on its way to perdition. It is only here, in my hands, because I rescued it.

Thumbing through its interior, I spend time appreciating the life of the previous owner. I wonder at the fresh young faces reflecting dreams and aspirations and fears and hope. I wonder how many of those reflections came true, how many were managed, how many directions their paths took them. How did they wind up?

Even if I could manage to assemble a lifetime yearbook for myself, for you, will there always come a time when some future person who never knew me will make a decision? Dumpster or thrift store? A puff of discarded memory or a chance for yet another life in the hands of a browsing yearbook-lover?

All those long-ago hopeful lives. It’s up to a handful of us to honor them or forget them. Our choice is ready to be made