Triple Flashback

Altering Realities Through Time

Dear Friend, 

It was a good long weekend. The company I’m working for closes down for the Friday and Monday of Easter weekend, which offered an opportunity to schedule some pick-ups and reshoots for my short film. Amazingly, most of our cast and crew were available and braved the L.A. rain on Saturday. Assuming there is actually footage on the hard drive when I transfer it, everything went miraculously smoothly.

After this push, I feel creatively lazy. All I want to do is read novels and not write. Lacking a topic for this letter, I decided to see what I wrote around this date in recent years. Here’s a couple of excerpts from my (pre-Substack) blog:

2020, March 29, Life In a Time of Pandemic

(We spent the first months of the pandemic in Gainesville, Florida, where I’d taken a visiting instructor position for a semester.)

In Florida, the temperatures have soared into the 80s. With my former fitness routines out the window, I take advantage of the cooler temperatures in the morning and evenings to walk around the neighborhood. I aim for 5000 steps per walk, tracking it on my phone, to reach the recommended allotment of ten-thousand steps daily. Who recommended that and when? I have no idea and lack the curiosity to look it up. It's a round number, a goal, and is as good as any.

A few others in my neighborhood have established similar routines. I pass mothers with strollers, fathers and sons, couples. There are not many of us, so it is not crowded. We give each other a wide berth, wait at crosswalks for each other to pass, cross to the opposite side of the street if we find ourselves heading toward each other on the same sidewalk, smiling and waving to show that it's not personal. There is a sense of solidarity in this.

But also, I realize, we tell each other with our smiles and waves that it's okay, we're not a threat, because under the bucolic ambiance, the lush green grass and the Spanish Moss hanging from the trees, there’s a sense that civilizations's hold on would-be predators is less than it was. The cats in the neighborhood have grown bolder. With car and foot traffic diminished, they sit in the middle of streets and watch the humans with brazen, insolent expressions. One day a cat follows me for a block. The few cars, especially in the evenings, also have a sense of prowling. They drive slowly, and the drivers, often single men, don't make it a point to smile and wave.

On Saturday evening, a car honks as it turns the corner near me and the man behind the wheel looks at me for too long as he passes. There are no other pedestrians around. 

This post goes on at my old blog.

2022, April 1, The Hulk is Real

(If you asked me about this date in 2022, I would only remember it was one week before a major surgery to remove my colon, but this post proves life was still happening.)

I have a writing / social group that I occasionally attend. One of our members collects snippets from overheard conversations and gives them as prompts for a ten-minute writing “warm-up.” A few weeks ago, one of the prompts was "the hulk is real." In my ten minutes I wrote a few paragraphs, and later expanded it into this story that appears in Altered Reality Magazine

The hulk inside me hulks and skulks on the sidelines, waiting for her chance to crash through walls.

Unfortunately for her, my life seldom calls for wall-crashing, so she spends a lot of time waiting. When she gets impatient, a wall sometimes starts to bulge and spider veins appear in the plaster. I have to remind her not to push.

I feel sorry for her, which is probably why, a couple months ago, I invited her to go to a dance class with me… continues at Altered Reality Magazine.

2023, April 2, 2023 Journal

(I do a fair amount of flailing on open-to-the-public forums, but when I’m extra-flailing, I opt for a private journal. Looking at a calendar, I would recall the reading—which was fun—but not my state of mind earlier in the day.)

Trying to remember today is a day to celebrate -- tonight I’m reading for the Santa Monica Review launch. Struggling to find the joy in general. Maybe because I'm working a lot, and anxious about letting things fall through the cracks. I’m in a basic discomfort with my own body…

2024, April 3, 2024, Substack

It turns out that I might have the beginnings of a topic after all. Though not fully formed, it’s something like “Isn’t it crazy how strange-feeling it is to move through time and constantly altering realities—even though that process is basically the entire premise of our lives?” (Or does it feel as strange to other people as it does to me? Does it feel strange to you?)

Here’s a few snapshots of reality taken from today’s newspapers for future-me to look back on: There was a 7.4 earthquake in Taiwan last night. Israel accidentally killed seven international aid workers in a bombing run. President Biden is “outraged” (but the U.S. is still planning to sell Israel billions of dollars worth of F-15 fighter jets). In Texas, Cal-Maine Foods destroyed about two million chickens after detecting avian flu. The bird flu has been found in dairy cows in multiple states and also in two humans, but officials say we don’t need to worry about it (I really hope this statement will not feel ironic in the future.) This coming week, a total eclipse will cross over North and Central America. (It will be 100% visible in my home town in Indiana, but I’ll be working in California. I’m sad to miss the sight, but more happy to have work.)

See you in another week, in another slightly altered reality.

B