Les Temps Perdu

Unpacking is just as time consuming as packing. So many decisions. What goes where, what goes back in the boxes... it's a slow process. Especially when you come across the unexpected that can bring things to a full stop. I just found a single unframed snapshot of Tommy, Billy and me at our Dad's apartment at Christmas 1975 among CDs. We're so damn young. I was growing out an afroperm and wearing a prairie dress I'd made. Billy and Tommy are longhaired, dressed very Starsky & Hutch-like and we're all laughing. I stopped unpacking and tried to remember that day so long ago. These are the things that take up time. I have to get copies of it to send to Billy and to Tommy's widow. So I grab a milk crate and sticky notes and make a "projects to do" box. Which will sit to the side and fill while I go on unpacking. No matter what your now is, something of the past can suck you right back in an instant and suddenly now doesn't seem as important, or as much fun. Maybe all of life really is an illusion. Or maybe it's the passage of time that's incomprehensible. 35+ years have gone by, Tommy's been dead a month already, and I'm sitting here clueless.