Future Tense

I am sitting here in front of the computer putting off the inevitable, waiting for the future-tense me to tap this present-tense me on the shoulder and tell me that everything will be easy peasy rather than the current topsy turvy.  This life is not easy, but others have it much more difficult than you, the wise future-tense laments, sprouting proverbs (I sure hope that she is wise...) as I stare blankly back at her.  My mind feels like an over-caffeinated, head-in-the-clouds marathon runner, one who has run miles upon miles and ends up in the same spot at the starting line every time, for she has lost track of where the race ends--lost in the process of it all.

As she takes one step back, and then another, the present-tense me begins to remember the reasons why the present matters, why and how the past informs the present.  The innumerable, complex connections spanning across time, running here and there--sometimes seemingly lost--comprises something greater than the sum of a life.  It is the measure of memories by the mind full; a consolatory homage to the past.  Frozen, permeable, forgotten...written down as a reminder to the living.