what was is certainly not now…

“. . .Looking forward to things is half the pleasure of them.”
L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

(the Hamilton-Phinizy-Segrest House, aka The Phi Mu House / Athens, Ga )

Perhaps a more appropriate title might read, 250 S. Milledge, Room 5 where are you?

So let's talk about living suddenly in a Twilight Zone…

A now surreal place where you thought you knew what was what..but now,
that what, is no longer what you thought.

It was a daily part of your own small world and it seemed bigger than life…
it was larger than anything you had known…because you had become it,
and it had become you and you both belonged together, becoming a quasi one.
Whatever that one might be.

But that was multiple lifetimes ago.

You were young and very foolish.

Fast forward 40 years along an odd spectrum of time,
and you suddenly find yourself no longer recognizing any of
the what that was.

There are a few glimpses here and there which are fleeting
all the while your brain races and rages in an attempt
to right the topsy turvy twist of time.

That building, that street, that park.

You are a compartmentalized thinking individual.
Mis en place, mis en place…as in… everything has its place.

Every place and every person has long been pegged for a certain
time and space…
and yet you never imagined that two time periods would, or could,
ever overlap.
Or maybe better yet, they have collided.

An odd continuum of time is simply circling back around.
But can a continuum actually bend?
Does it not simply travel straight?
Time does not, cannot split right?

Driving up and down roads whose names are familiar, you
find yourself looking for those familiar faces from
all those many years prior.

40 years ago, you lived in a pre-civil war home.
You lived in that house 120 years following its
original inception.
Yours was room 5.

Green and pink was a theme.
Your personal room's veranda was nothing but a window sill.
It looked out over a small patch of grass with a lone oak tree.

If you are really still, you might be able to hear music
whispering on the wind…

It was a time for both romanticism and foolishness…
contingent only upon one's age and experience.

And now when the two collide, both the what was and the what is,
it is a surreal mix of regret, expectation, remorse
and hope.

And isn't that what our lives are all about…
the what was, the now and the what will be?

If we are fortunate, blessed with longevity and health,
clear of mind and vision…
we may have the luxury of merging our what was
with our what will be.

But there is never any given guarantee.

If we have regrets, so be it.
The fact of the matter is that it is more important to have hope…

Regret lives in the what was.
Like rustling lifeless fallen dried leaves
blowing helplessly in the wind.

Wonder lives in the now.
A freshly opened flower…yet its beauty is shortly lived.

Hope, on the other hand, lives for the what will be.
An endless sea of possibilities.
No matter the time or age.

Glance back if you must, but don't stare too long…
the what will be might just run off without you.

Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect,
but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.
Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own.
But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward
to what lies ahead,
I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God
in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 3:12-14

Memory

Gratitude changes the pangs of memory into a tranquil joy.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

(an old home-place in the middle of nowhere western Georgia / Julie Cook / 2013)

The old metal spring frame screeches obnoxiously with the slightest turn and twist.
Eyes blink in the inky blackness haplessly trying to focus.
No street lights, no city glow, just the twinkling of a million stars filling an endless sky.

The mattress thin and lumpy, ancient army surplus, offers little in the way of comfort.
The unzipped sleeping bag certainly not refreshing in the stifling humid summer’s night air.
There’s no breeze, no movement, no relief. . .only the shrill symphony of sound produced by the profusion of an endless sea of tree frogs.

Lying in the darkness, with arms folded under head, staring upward at the nothingness in the tiny musty room, pleasant thoughts race across the expanse of time.
Old wooden planks pop and groan recalling the countless steps which once trod over the roughly hewn surface.
Fading laughter mixes with the steady hum of cicada.

The once binding tie of whispered secrets now mingle together with the rising smoke from the countless crackling fires.
Age old stones, stacked artfully together generations earlier, blackened by years of thick heavy soot, offer a warm, smokey, familiar welcome.

The intimate faces, which form a memorable past, collide in the middle of this darkened night, with the new faces of a current life.
The difference between now and then spans across an endless abyss of time and space.
The experiences of “then”, which make the current moments of “now”, merge mindlessly together resulting in the singleness of one

Lying in the darkness on a hot humid night, with all that was and with all that is, tenderly forming the basis of the dreams yet dreamt, heavy eyes now close as muscles give in to the weariness of time, while a magical dance of a thousand fireflies sparkles, beyond an old broken window, as the singleness of now is made whole by the union of then.