August 17th, 2008

I'm living under water. Everything seems slow and far away. I know there's a world up there, a sunlit quick world where time runs like dry sand through an hourglass, but down here, where I am, air and sound and time and feeling are thick and dense.

I wish I could see myself in the future. I wish I could talk to her right now, ask her what she misses about herself in my present now.  Would she miss fending for herself, even if she really didn't make that much at work? Would she miss doing tasks in a monotonous day job? Would she miss the bleakness of the future, or has she gotten used to it by then?

I hope not to recognize her straight away. I hope she has managed to look fitter by then-- I'd be dying to know how she did it! I hope she has grown her hair beautifully. I hope she isn't dependent on food anymore in order to feel good, in order to escape stress. I hope she's less of a perfectionist than how I am now.

Surprisingly, I'm also hoping, envisioning, to see her gushing with a date on a lovely Friday evening. I haven't had butterflies in my stomach for the longest time.

He said something interesting: he said that he thinks there is only free will when you are in time, in the present. He says in the past we can only do what we did, and we can only be there if we were there.

But I cannot dictate my future, as much as I want to. It may be a scarier place, but who knows really? All I know is I can only stay wherever here and now is, while every second vanishes away to that bucket we all call the past.

I don't want to look back and regret that I did nothing... while I still had my parents living in good shape, while I still had the power to run on the treadmill, while I still had the choice to splurge my money only for myself, and while I still had my youth to enjoy.

Here and now. That's where I need to be.

* Quotes from the novel The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Currently listening to: Fast Car by Tracy Chapman
Currently feeling: complacent