Here We Are, Trapped In The Amber Of The Moment

“Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.” - Kurt Vonnegut

I’ve discovered that I am most present with what is not here. I am the kind of person who longs for. Who savors. Who stockpiles hotel keys, t-shirts left behind. Who, as a child, licked the bowl, the spoon, the bottom of the just-cooled skillet my grandmother used to make her chocolate icing. Who saves letters not for the words they contain but for the handwriting, for the hands that brushed the page.

I linger. I want everything, but especially this, to last. Preservation, proof, posterity: these are the things I write for.

And in 20 years, in a month, five days, tomorrow, I will miss this. On the way to the grocery store the other day, I wished there was no gravity so we could float everywhere. But I felt like floating takes too long – sometimes I want to go FAST. So I decided, “Okay. I wish for gravity. But I also wish for wings.” 

It occurred to me that wings are kind of a celebration of gravity – without gravity, flying isn’t special. The past and the present, living and writing, have the same kind of relationship to me – the one celebrating the other.