I’m in the middle of the southern Arizona desert blasting north at 75 miles an hour. I’m at that rise, just beyond the Boarder Patrol checkpoint, when I glance in the rearview mirror and see it all laid out before me.
“Back there,” I think, “is everything I know in a certain sense.”
Memory Reflector
Recently both my parents died, and I have just (finally, finally) settled up everything, and have gotten my ass out of what I can only relate to as being a horrid place to live. Back there, in that rearview mirror is the past. Not just the literal past, where I was driving a few moments before, but my past. My parents house where they retired. Three bedrooms and two baths of stuff neither me nor my brothers really wanted, but a house that now, in my mind’s eye, is some sort of strange reflector of memories on top of memories on top of memories. It hits me that I am not driving a car, and a limited-run racing special with a “significant” competition history at that. No, I’m not driving a car, I’m driving a time machine. In here, it’s the present. In the rearview mirror, it’s the past. And out there, on the other side of that windshield, is the future.
Cars are interesting things. They’re more than art objects or a way to get dates; or a way to show off or a way to get you from point A to B. Cars are, in their own way, time machines.
And the future is roaring more than a mile a minute.
The Future I...