I sit at my desk and remember how, years ago, I wonder what my life will be like when I am fifty, which I am now. I’m imagining that I’m living in a big house, I remember as I sit in my one-bedroom apartment. Now I pour myself a drink and cast my mind back to a time when I’m full of hope and passion which is never to be extinguished, as it is now.
‘What am I doing?’ I mutter to myself, taking a sip of my drink. In my memory, I’m seven years old, sitting in the highest branches of a tree which is being planted a hundred years before I am born. Now, though, the tree is long dead. I’m chopping it down at the age of twenty and thinking about when it is supporting my weight at the age of seven. I look at my watch.
‘Late,’ I mutter to myself. It is eight; the retrospective is just starting, half an hour ago.
Ah, the old Dr Manhattan method.
ReplyDeleteRemembrance of Things Present:Stickley Way.
ReplyDelete:-)
Guess you didn't like Slaughterhouse Five.
ReplyDelete"as it has now been" surely "as it is now"??
ReplyDeleteThanks, Anon – sometimes you spend so long trying to work out a terrible way of writing something, you end up overlooking the simplest things.
ReplyDeleteI've never liked present tense. It's more confusing than anything.
ReplyDeleteI am what I am. At least, I think I was.
ReplyDeleteGreat post. Loved it.
Thanks for leading me here. What a great blog! Another one to add to my favourites!
ReplyDeleteRebekah, that's because it's really the non-past, not the present.
ReplyDeleteIt's like the exact opposite of skipping blithely among tenses, but still just as badly well!
ReplyDeleteI am most impressed with your handling of the present - it's a gift.
ReplyDeleteThis would make for a fabulous non-linear time traveler type character's speech pattern.
ReplyDeleteSounds just like Faulkner to me. There's always that weird point where good writing and bad writing meet . . . .
ReplyDeleteI am reading this entry and thinking about how hilariously it is being written back in March. I think about what I am doing on that day: I don't remember. I have homework that I must complete, which I am supposed to be starting several hours ago.
ReplyDeleteHehe.
ReplyDeleteI like the elegance of the system of English tenses. Spent years understanding it and almost as many years teaching it. Really beautiful. And slightly confusing, yes.