Intermission

If someone had told you about this moment, would you have believed them?

This time, I am standing by the railroad tracks, staring at the cranes, scenery broken up by a man in coveralls riding past on a bicycle from WW II. My hard hat pinches because I wear it too tight, like a vise. It’s windy and wet and the hem of my pants drags in the mud. In the movies, something would happen now. Something more than just a light rain.

Could you ever have imagined this?

I ask myself that a lot. Once, I remember asking someone else. The answer was that they never imagined anything about the future, so the present moment was as predictable as everything else that they had never predicted. I couldn’t decide whether that was the best way to be or the very worst.

I still can’t.