Just as there is no such thing as death, so there is no such thing as the future. Added to which the past is a decidedly murky sort of place. And the present, of course, is a tangle of shouts and screams plus a few moments of beatific peace. But don’t get lost in the maze of despair because hope is eternally available at a knock down price in the narrow, dimly lit alleys of your dreams. Eternity is just round the corner and we wait with bated breath for Apple to finally produce the device that will open all the doors.
As we all know, stories must have a beginning, a middle and an end, in order that we know where we are. How old are? The crone asks with that wicked grin of hers. Where are you in your life? Don’t get lost in the maze of her lined face, you will never get out again. Past, present, future: the fiction of time. I was very impressed recently by my 6 year old granddaughter telling me about fiction and non-fiction. Wow, I thought, she’s getting ahead of the game. What else do we have children for but for their children to put us straight when we can no longer see the world clearly. It’s all a race to the beginning. As usual.
Each day I have to get up and rewrite the story so far. Remember, what I mean is dredge up, a few dodgy fragments of the past and weave them into what the day is looking like. Was there a yesterday I can be sure of? Not really. And as to the future . . . Well who’s to say?
I think where I’m heading with this line of thought, this fragile thread of nonsense, is towards that elusive goal of freedom. The terrifying freedom in which one has been cast aside by the conflicted narratives that are hurled “willy-nilly” (do you remember willy-nilly?) at our overwrought minds by the many faces, the whirling arms of the fiction industry.
This modernism forces us to abandon history and progress – we can hang on to neither dystopian nor utopian fantasies (well, you can if you like) – to hang free in some sort of mysterious space that I can never get the hang of. Am I strong enough, I ask myself, to live this freedom. I think the answer must be no. I need a myriad of global corporations, the Empires (no not that one in Leicester Square) with their tamed story tellers, their glitzy, ever optimistic stories to shore up my failing mind. Then I will be able to slip into the warm bath of their generous offers of slavery.
No worries . . . ahhhhhhh . . .
Can I see a space, can I open up the space between the act and the potential? There, is the door, the door marked thereness and here is me, Iness, call me your’ighness.
