I couldn't sleep. My existence was tight like a thin memory -- the walls of the tent were like a vague gauze. My hand passed through it as though it wasn't there; I shook off my sleeping bag into a heap of goose down on the spongy floor. I stood and what was left of my tent flew off like ribbons into the gray night. The trees were ill streaks blotting the faint spirals that had been stars. The mud was hard, but there were other strange things.
A 5 liter, red dry bag was solid rubber, one of the few things with a connection to the future. I dumped its contents to the ground -- a couple of XD cards for my old/new waterproof camera; a couple black moleskine notebooks, a torn-up map of western Canada from an old National Geographic, and the book of prophecy from the (fictional) used book seller in Winnipeg.
In that hissing light which was neither wake nor dream, I picked it up, and saw for the first time my name on the cover, and the date "April 2013" in my unmistakable scrawl. The present/future was inside:
^1 WEAK, SICK, FROZEN, BROKE WILL YOU REACH THE CITIES ^2 WHERE YOU WILL STAY INDEFINITELY ^3 GETTING AND LOSING JOBS, FRIENDS, CATS ^4 AND BUY A HOUSE ^5 ONLY YEARS LATER RETURNING TO THESE FRAGMENTS OF HISTORY AND ^6 WONDER WHO YOU WERE GOING TO BE ^7 WHERE YOU WERE GOING ^8 AND WHO YOU WILL BE ^9 IN THESE STRANGE MEMORIES ^10 YOU WONT FINISH RECORDING UNTIL YOU DONT KNOW WHAT IT MEANS
There was nothing strange about the Red River of the North; it was just another river, the water flowing through it until it reached some other place.
Day 105 ended: 49*37.512N, 097*07.258W
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
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2 comments:
I recently found myself migrating back to livejournal, where reading the profile I had left, I recognized myself as no longer being that person. I never had the foresight to see that change would occur, though.
It's much easier to do so when collaborating with the you of 5 years ago.
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