May 10th, 2006
Things that might have happened
A old friend of mine told me he had a crush on me in 1977. Shit. I had a crush on him too. I didn’t try hard enough — nor did he. He said he had a girlfriend. I believed him.
We both were taken aback speculating what MIGHT have happened had we become lovers. I would have stayed on the East Coast, or would I? We could have become a prominent queer couple in Boston [is that possible?]. I might be working now at Boston University, or Harvard, or MIT, or… maybe I’d be dead from AIDS, or maybe we would have broken up after I took a job in North Dakota.
Trying to fathom things that might have happened is such a slippery and unsettling temptation. When Ram Das (Richard Alpert) entreats us to “be here now,” it is these futile loops that drive home the importance of living completely in the present.
T. S. Eliot sings of “the still point of the turning world.” That present yet mercurial moment can allow these kinds of fantasies to occur only as daydreams in the present, and ultimately only live on as an imprint in one’s own memory.
T. S. Eliot refers to this existential ticklishness in the opening section of “Four Quartets:”
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
T. S. Eliot
May 17th, 2006 at 12:36 pm
The story reminds me of a friend of mine and his best friend. If he lets me I may one day put their story to paper. Or at least use it for my own interpretation.
May 21st, 2006 at 7:05 am
You could always offer up a synopsis of the story and change the names to protect their privacy….
May 21st, 2006 at 10:29 am
Thank you. The problem is that I’m not sure how I’m going to do it yet. I sent him a link to this blog, I know he has read it, but so far we haven’t discussed it. There is a lot of regret and pain involved.
May 21st, 2006 at 2:33 pm
Ah, then perhaps you should be circumspect. Or wait,and turn it into a story later.