damonjustisntfunny.com

Time is such a strange phenomenon and I am aware that it is esoteric to discuss it, especially at the end of an amusing tale. The emotional response loses its vitality when it has been dictated to the page or read back aloud. But we can only manage with what we are given and a memoir promises to remember — to conjure up memories and weave them into the fabric of time through the telling of a tale. As I rode along that Labor Day Weekend, I was filled with awe-inspired understanding surrounding the grandness and amazing nature of time and life. I could envision myself outside of my self on those roads as I drove; I could see Ben just ahead, around the next curve, pedaling ever onward. The experience was like none other: I had been there. Ben had been there. We had ridden it all on two bikes with packs and gear and friendship between us.

Less than three months had passed since Ben and I had begun. Two and a half, at most. And yet I was a different person. Time had changed, it had sped up, and was of a different quality than it had been before. As I was driving along all this nonsense about time and relativity and the moment made sense; the tangibility of the ideas were near enough to touch and prompted me to reach out of the car window to try and touch the fabric of my own shirt as I passed myself bicycling down the road. It was all so clear then. But when I sat down at the keyboard it was gone. The moments had disappeared. What was left was so obscure and intangible as requiring to be described with a poor cliché or metaphor. I don’t know what to say but: what it all comes down to, just like a kiss or a trip or a friend or a post-prandial nap on a busy afternoon, is this:

You can’t articulate the moment without leaving it.

THE END

Previous Page |