“It’s being here now that’s important. There is no past and there is no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever, is the now. We can gain experience from the past, but we can’t relive it; and we can hope for the future, but we don’t know if there is one.” (George Harrison)
Seventy-three years is well past my sell-by date. The men in my family all died in their sixties. My dad died twelve years ago and the years since have been both blessing and bewilderment. A blessing because I have been endowed with a surprise of extra time. The bewilderment comes when I ask, “Why?”
In 2023, 2024, and most of 2025 I became disillusioned with the past work in books and music and began to wander in my mind while doing manual labor (the first time ever) in the yard, woods, and basement of our property. Then the hurricane hit Western North Carolina. Our house was not damaged, but electricity and water was out for two weeks. Trees were down, with oaks hit the hardest.
At the same time, corresponding with a long-lost friend from the 70s, I got the urge to begin writing again, but without the structural restrictions I imposed on myself in writing for magazines and books–as well as the staid editing I did for other authors.
We not only gain experience from the past, we developed the scaffolding of our lives. And as the past grows into the future, the scaffolding has to be repaired, demolished, and rebuilt until we are who we are today.
For those of us still given the gift of time, we may have a faith in the things to come, but all we have is the now. And it should not be wasted. I’m about ready to begin again.
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