Seize the day

Old yearbooks. You know each face so well--after all, you spend seven hours a day with them, every day, now in 6th grade, now in 9th--there in 10th grade you know you've only got two years to go--and that they will fly--and yet you are no closer to graduation than you were in 6th grade... your point in time is a location you cannot escape, and it's kind of humorous that we think tomorrow is closer than next year. It's not. The only touchable time is now, and tomorrow is just as far away as 6th grade...

.....where I tasted a cinnamon christmas ornament; the first time I walked into the cafeteria; when I compared my mechanical pencil to a deskmate's; finding our assigned seats in a yet darkened room; day after day for four years in high school, up the ramp, down the ramp, or the back stairs; knowing a building that was already a memory for older sisters; teachers and classrooms and lockers who all witnessed their share of drama and tragic deaths and pregnancies and United States history...

each spent day shall never be touched again. It goes into a toy crane vending machine, dropped on top of the pile, most accessible by a principle of sequence. You can use the crane to rummage around and arrange what memories are visible, but you'll never hold one-a bygone day- in your hand again.

I must stop being fooled by the equal clarity of my memories. Though I can riffle through a pile of stuffed animals for a really cute blue one, only to drop it in favor for one I'd already cast aside, I can never pick up a day again once it has fallen off. We are, in fact, bound to a sequence, moment upon moment, day upon day.

The old yearbook was not as old as others on the shelf, they are all equally bygone. Open any yearbook within a decade, and see the purpose served--faces speaking for the poor, the wealthy, the broken, the strong; gallantry, hope, isolation, ambition. Be all you can be if your parents make the way straight.

Worlds ago. Since grade school, five unique years of college. Then one decides to attend a class reunion. Like magnetic activity, the classmates fall into the old patterns, and as their conversation reflects adolescence, so their adult jobs, spouses, styles, are what seem out of place. After all, when 6th grade teachers asked us to write down where we wanted/expected to be in ten years, didn't we all know ten years into the future was as good as nonexistant?

So it is today we have, and not tomorrow. Today may cast shadows and lights on tomorrow, but tomorrow is never in hand like today. Today--yesterday--there it goes--gone.