Even further back in time...

And what of the ten years before that? Now we’re talking twenty years. But I can conceive it, I can feel it. I can hold it in my mind.

And what of twenty years before that? I was around, walking and breathing and always looking up. It was the early sixties and my parents and all of their friends were at the top and then my brother and his friends were up there too and I was at the bottom. Looking up to the people in my life and also looking up to the culture, always looking up and observing and accepting everything as reality, my reality, the reality.

Now I’m holding forty years in my mind. I know what its like to live through that passage of time.

And what of forty years before that?

Now I know what it’s like to be in the nineteen thirties. I can feel it.

And what of 80 years before that?

Now I’m in the eighteen fifties. And it seems impossible, that’s so long ago. Everyone is dead. And everyone who knew them is dead and its all just distant names. I mean, how many of us even know any of our great, great, great, great grandparents names? I don’t. But they all lived. Way back then. Just like we live now. Days were long and twenty times a day something really pissed you off, something that seemed so important at the time but seems so trivial today. Beyond trivial. Less than trivial. Meaningless.

And what of one hundred a sixty years before that? And three hundred and sixty years before that?

In moments I’m back to ancient Rome and they had lives exactly like ours today. They thought they were in a post modern error with unbelievable technology capable of aqueducts and coliseums and cement and all the other conveniences of what seemed to be a modern life. It always seems modern. Until you look back.

I’ve probably lost you by now, I think I’ve lost myself. It’s tough to play this game with someone else. I’m not a writer, if I were a writer I could probably play the game better with you.