The 2012 Time Capsule

Desmond, Ivor, Molly, and I have been attempting all day to construct a time "capsule" in as much of a nod to sadly outdated past predictions of the future as a way to sanctify the mundane in our lives.


Trouble is that we've been mired in this bog/fog/clog all the livelong day. But we'll have something going soon. It's an issue of focus, even though none of us had a drop to drink last nite.


This all started with my rarely (if ever) satiable curiosity about what happens in unseen/unheralded places. This curiosity is what leads to the phone's being answered when, by all probable accounts, it's a telemarketer or some vile Newsmax survey taker on the other end of the line. As we now "own" this house, I've taken to "exploring" it freely, which is not to say that I'll ever do all of the exploring that I would like to do.


There's an area beneath our stairs, for instance, where nothing is, as far as we know, excepting an envelope of space confined by walls. i've been yearning to experience the majesty of that tiny, esoteric nook for quite some time.


Molly has humored me extensively through our 8.3 years together, indulging my off-kilter theories and flights of fancy without judgment. This time, however, required a bit of doing, as our place is a wreck with all of its wallpaper removed and such. In the end, it was our dear friend and next-door neighbor, Maggie Sutton, whose suggestion really optimized the adventure. I'll paraphrase: "It's okay, because no matter what you find, you can leave something behind. Et voila! The Time Capsule. Contents forthcoming.


Here we are:


* 1 compact disc (a mix that I assembled and named "Philomena" as part of a project in which the songs on a disc would define a person's characteristics)


* 1 necktie


* 1 pair toddler's underwear


*1 Lindt Chocolate Bar packaging


*1 Electrical Outlet Cover


*1 Experian Credit Report, vandalized by Desmond


*1 Hot Wheels™ Vehicle


*1 "Feel Good" Card about How to Make Your Life Seem Meaningful


* 1 AA Battery


* 1 Alphabet Block, with letters and shit on it


* 2 DSL Filters


* 1 Family Portrait by Desmond Gallaher (ink on paper)


We deposited these things, sans "capsule," despite having found NOTHING in that "hiding place." And we were thrilled at what these items might convey to their future finders.

Ahh.

The Future Was Then

1/4/2011, 9:47 PM


Yikes. Sorry for my protracted and unexcused absence (inferring that it was notable, which is a mite presumptuous), but all of my fingers have been, and are currently, crossed about the possibility of having work. This makes a dreadful mess of typing; I am quite sure that you understand.


Welcome to 2011! This, my first post of this year, should tell you all that we are officially now living in a time to which I'd devoted no advance thought, at all. I mean, it was fun to speculate about the future when it was still the future, but my vision of life essentially ended around 2010—not because of death or anything, but because it became hazy and/or I grew sick of thinking about it. 


As a youngster, the future bored me in ways that I could never explain, despite that I knew a lot about explanations and how to make them. As I've seen it (and I love being wrongheaded), one of the more frustrating qualities intrinsic to having been born fairly recently (I was born in 1978) is that my personal experience is, to some degree at least, inextricable from zeitgeist and cultural memory that wields roughshod authority to trump the subjective textures of my experience.  (Like, "Hey—that's not what this horrid slab of Hollywood tripe says you were doing.") 


Romanticizing in retrospect is easier than Sunday morning to do, because borne of the aforementioned trumping is a failure to recognize that the evolution of situational dynamics since that point for which you're pining has irrevocably altered the context of your saudade. When I was 16, I went to a show by the Dog Faced Hermans. They were, at the time, one of my very favorite groups, and I knew that they would be disbanding after their tour. Their show was mesmerizing, I say now, and I suppose that my feelings were largely consistent with that at the time, but I had this gigantor canker sore in my mouth that hurt like absolute heck. Subjectivity.


As I stood there, I made it a point to always remember that sore, because I suspected that the outcome of something so trivial (yet pivotal) would bear some amount of retrospective influence. (One of the openers, Helios Creed [formerly of Chrome], will probably remember that show as the one during which an audience member fell asleep on the lip of the stage. [If you ever read this blog, Mr. Creed—I'm sorry. I have Narcolepsy, but nobody would've guessed it at the time.]) 


And perhaps it's always been that way/this way with memory and its inordinate elasticity, but when people begin (as they have) to self-identify by way of the media that they consume (or the things that they acquire), we're in for some lame-arsed vicarious nonsense in which very little is decipherable between people. The interval between an event and its imprint dwindles to the point at which we shit as we swallow. 


It seems that 2011 begins and ends more or less instantly, in accordance with news cycles and natural disasters that dare the collective disunion that is humanity to live at its pace. I'm too lumpy to consider trying, but I feel really good about that. So there, future—you'll have to make your way to my present.