Time passes, doesn’t it?
Or, it seems to. Perhaps it’s me.
Most often, I can’t see it happen.
Like watching the hour hand or stars on a clear night or my kids age.
“Weren’t you just thirteen? What the hell?”
I drift off and Orion is over there now.
I notice only in retrospect that things changed.
You’d think I would see change in the mirror in the morning, shaving, but I’ve forgotten who that kid was.
I’ve attended and worked outdoor industry and related trade shows for over forty years. There are a thousand people I’ve shared this ride with, some I’m very close to, others whom I only see twice a year. Seeing each other is often warm or hysterical but also jarring like a recurring dream. Sometimes I need to read their show badge to nudge the memories.
I realized this week what a rare experience this has been, having so many fellow travelers to share this one narrow but energetic slice of my life with, mirrors for one another, planets that orbit and pass, every summer and every winter, noticing both how much and how little we have each changed, some more gracefully than others.
I am grateful for it, this human, temporal measuring stick.
I don’t need it to mean anything.
Like all rivers, it just flows and I just watch.
-Geoff Shōun O’Keeffe
昭雲
June 26, 2019
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