Ferreting through my box of old writings today (such a lovely rainy-Sunday activity) I unearthed this. I must have written it twenty-five years ago, as I refer to 'my children' as if I might have some - I never did. I remember even as a teenager having this strong feeling of connection with future "me's", that my life was all happening all at once, but I forgot it in my thirties, to be re-awakened to it in my mid-forties. It was partly this reconnection between past and future "me's" that helped to heal me of my depression. I have a "family of me's" all ready to support each other.
I'm glad I kept everything I ever wrote. Ink is more durable than memory.
Now I know what Sam Clements meant. [Who? Did I mean Samuel Clemens - Mark Twain? If I did, I can only have read a little of his stuff - he put forward so many viewpoints across his life.] Everything is ordained, he insisted, mapped out, planned; our lives stretching before us as well as behind; the book has been written, read, and closed long before we take our first breath.
Sometimes it can seem so. But still, I have the choice to lay down my pen and walk out of the room, I could scream, put out my cigarette, cry for lost lovers - I don't, but I have the feeling that I could. Perhaps the feeling is just part of the detailed passage about my life, my thoughts.
Certainly it seems that we cannot choose who we love. We fall, always the word used, in love with this person or that - by chance? Or does some superpower, some force, some cosmic intelligence, cause a shift in the infrastructure of space and time which presents us with this person to love? Here she is, here he is. Here I am. I stand before you, it is ordained that you love me. You cannot resist. Indeed, trying to resist is only part of the play, written, edited and finalised long ago.
I am young, but I feel old. There is no difference. Age is a definition with no meaning. I am thirteen, twenty, thirty-two, sixty, all at once. I am unborn, I am dead. This moment is one viewpoint in my life, I remember all that has happened, from being born to dying. Lovers in succession, marching, trampling over me, trampling each other, feeling my hard boot on their faces. Yes, all is love and beauty, all is heartache, apathy, grey.
Yes, my children are all dead. Their children are dead. That is the only certainty. If ever they lived at all.
Who sees fit to control me in this way? What huge game is this? Why am I not aware of what is in store for me? Where is the cosmic library holding life-stories about each of us? Could I not read the passage about me, and thus relieve myself of painful decision-making, if the decision is already made?
I don't believe it! I can and will take control. I will rule me, no-one else can get near.
Why do I hear such a peal of cosmic laughter?
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