Is That You I See?

Note: I first published this a year ago today. It remains as true now as it was then, for me.



We've got lots of cliches about the passing of time in English. Some relate to how we forget.

We can forget how someone looks. We can forget how it felt to be with them. We quite easily, it seems, forget the good along with the bad.

It all goes away, somewhere far from here.

After a while, trying to recall, the only image we can summon is fuzzy. No matter how hard we try, nothing comes back into focus.

Maybe it's just as well, maybe the person and experiences we were trying to recall were never anything but illusions anyway.

So what's left to he who would try to see is -- nothing. Once you've been written out of the story, the story itself ceases to exist.

Stories are like plants, they can easily wither and die once no one is taking care of them any longer.

In time, the story may return in some sort of romanticized version or as a cautionary tale about the dangers of giving away too much to others. Or maybe it will just stay gone, which might be just as well.

What's left? That may be an empty field you see, a place to build a new beginning. Or it may be a truck barreling down on you to flatten you once and for all.

You can't tell. Most likely it is nothing at all, just an out of focus void. There is no field, there is no truck, there is no other, there only is you and you are alone.

So, you see, you better get used to it. That's what the world is trying to tell you now. You're on your own.

-30-