I Didn't Expect the Future to Come This Fast

I have been cleaning out some of my memorabilia, and rearranging what is left. There is still a lot left. Among the items I found was a 1984 article from either US or People Magazine about keeping a diary. By this time, I had been a diarist for about six years and I needed the affirmation of the value of engaging in the practice. The man pictured, Thomas Mallon, had just published a book about the process, called A Book of One's Own:  People and Their Diaries. His advice for an approach to journaling was not unlike the one I had developed. And like me, he had found it a rewarding experience. And there was something marvelous about capturing the ordinary of history. I was obviously affected by the article. I kept it for 33 years. And I kept journaling.

After re-reading the article, my first impulse was to look up Thomas Mallon and see what those years had wrought for him. He was only a few years older than me in 1984. I had just turned thirty. I had been in California for only three years and my experience of the private practice of law (I worked for a practitioner) in this state had already disillusioned me. I still had hopes of becoming a television comedy writer, but slowly I saw that my need to make a living was making that hope more remote. My hope of marriage and children had already become remote as I wended my way into my fourth decade, but was not yet completely extinguished.

The whoosh of time. I googled Mr. Mallon. Back in 1984, the idea of being able to find information in a flash wasn't on anyone's radar. A Book of One's Own was apparently his first book on the glories of individuals preserving their past and thus the accumulated pasts of which make up history. He has written several books since that first, novels and historical fiction. He teaches English at a college in Washington.



I am always startled when I see the impression time makes in other faces. He is still handsome, still vibrant, still engaged fully in life, but it is hard to recognize as I consider his face that mine too has changed, probably as much. I see myself as I was, mostly, when I look in the mirror, a little droop here and there, some crevices but still fully recognizable as I was. But of course that is self-delusion. The future came fast. Our ancestors have always warned us that this is one of the features of human existence, but it is only in retrospect that we realize that it is so.

I had a long career as at attorney (30 years) and I have been retired from that career (though I keep active on the rolls) for several. I am doing more writing than ever; maybe some of it will one day be published officially, though in this world of technology, I am fortunate to have a forum right here. And it is here that I am trying to freeze my past so that it makes its way, in photos and words to connect with someone I shall never meet, in the future I will not see.