XIX

Forty years ago, cogs rain on Brooklyn...

I've just spent the last thirty minutes staring at a picture that was taken exactly a year ago today.

There's a party. I'm on a couch with someone, and another person is sitting across from us. I remember we were talking about art and belly dancing, right before the picture was taken. I had known the person on the couch for about a week, and the person sitting across from me for about fifteen minutes.

An hour ago, the person I was sitting next to on the couch told me that he's going to take the person sitting across from me out on a date this weekend. When their date rolls around, it'll have been exactly one year since I went on the first date with the person sitting on the couch.

...well, I thought it was kind of eerie.



I'm sitting here looking at this picture, thinking of everything that's happened since it was taken. All the people, all the places, the ups, the downs, the disorienting hurdles that jerk your neck back, causing whip lash. And then I think of things that have happened outside of my life-with-blinders. All the politics, the wars, the epidemics, the menial-yet-still-important scientific discoveries... I couldn't even begin to count.

Every year we all end up saying something to the effect of "this year went by faster than last year." It really does feel like just last weekend I was sitting there, beer in hand, discussing belly dancing with this stranger, turned acquaintance.

I've always been told that the closer we come to Armageddon, the faster time will seem to pass. My theory is that the older we get, the more aware of time's passage we become. It's not that we, as a whole, are getting closer to Armageddon; rather, we, individually, are getting closer to our own eminent demise.