for posterity, and whatever cliff it happens to fall from in anticlimatic

I always think that I’m writing for my own record keeping, assuming that a day will come when I’ll want to go back and read through all the old thoughts I had and forgotten about, but not once have I ever gone back and read a single thing. In fact just thinking about doing it makes me want to fall asleep. The last person I want to hear from is a younger and dumber version of myself. What could possibly be learned from him?

It’s interesting and sad to me, the things we do in the present for a future that never arrives.

The scene from Train Dreams that still haunts my dreams to this day is the shot of his bed at the end of the film- long after his house had been vacated and left alone in the woods, with the soft dusty light and the moss and the plant life slowly taking over the old rotting log cabin.

Abandoned houses that have fallen to the elements and ruin feel like they were made like that- just to be creepy haunted houses in the woods. I have come upon and explored many in my day. It’s hard to peel back the years and see the warm home that meant something to someone, maybe for a lifetime. I think about all the intricate craftsmanship I take my time executing on my own house, pretending a future buyer isn’t going to just gut it all, reshape everything, and make it their own- or raze the whole thing and build something else entirely.

I think back to the world of the 90s a lot, and the vision we had for the future back then. We thought recycling was us reusing our paper, plastic, and glass. We thought that was an actual thing that worked. We thought the food pyramid was a good diet principal to live by. We had groups like The Green Earth Gang, where we would go around picking up trash and create reusable containers for ourselves and people. The cities with the most hippies were the cleanest and most desirable places to be on the planet.

Now? Not so much. Not so much of any of that. The future that we thought was coming veered off a cliff it seems. Any future we think is coming now is likely to do the same, I fear. It’s why I always get irritated when people talk about how “history will judge us” or what the “right side of history” surely will be.

Your life, the things you think are important- everything and everyone you hold dear, is just a forgotten snap shot on an online archive of forgotten snapshots…that once in a while some creature or computer happens to look at, maybe puzzle over for a moment if you’re lucky, and then move on without an actual clue who you were, or where the future you were sure was coming ever went.

1980 protest of a local nuclear power plant