loosely tethered

I just finished and submitted a final portfolio of academic work that is supposed to prove that I deserve an advanced degree from this place called Tech.

and in the portfolio's accompanying essay, near the middle of my rambly, reflective introduction, I included the following sentence:

"Both the weight of the work accumulating in my past and the tug of plans I am making for the future define the place I am in right now."

thinking about the strange and precarious symmetry of that idea reminded me of a post from two years (and a bit) ago, where I stitch together sentences about imaginations, writing, and the future. I quote Joan Didion. I quote Neil Gaiman. I ponder the worth of an MFA.

re-reading that is a little--well, could I say precarious and symmetrical? that's the feeling. two years ago, two years ago. I'm on a different side of the same amount of time, now. there are concentrations of gravity in completely new spheres of the world for me now. the future is pulling on me. the past is kicking up soft, impossibly fine and somewhat sparkling dust. I don't know how to judge the balance, quite.

I wrote, in that previous two-years-ago post, that the future (mine, anyway) has no gravity beyond what I give it. tomorrow cannot pull you to anywhere you aren't already facing.

because the future doesn't exist yet, after all, no matter how many philosophers admit its determined and unalterable nature. the future is shadowy and unexplored. it is. it is so difficult to see--yet it is not exactly a story untold. we tell stories about it all the time. there is scripting and rehearsing of anticipated conversations, confrontations, consummations. there is so much expectation.

and when the future arrives, it isn't ever quite what we thought it would be like. the fading glimmers of just a moment ago have a different ring--a different tenor in them; the brand new darkness feels somehow colder or smoother or closer than before; the absence of so much that made yesterday yesterday tastes so inconceivably unexpected.

this. the words and their precarious, malleable arrangements... all the words with which I carve the blocks of my history and twine the cords of my potential... the alphabetic mush from which I construct these un-keepable elements of who I am, where I am, what I do and why... all of these.

they will keep.