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Friday, April 05, 2019

The Two Worlds Most Persistent

I wake again in the wrong. Perpetual summer at the University of Alberta, always late in third year or early in fourth year, trying to convince those old friends that I was stuck there, with my life in the present out of reach, my knowledge of the next thirty years or so useless because unbelievable, ridiculous. When these jumps happen, none of those old friends believe that I'm a middle-aged man trapped in my younger body, with a life on the far side of time.

My Atari 520ST, with its connection to local electronic bulletin boards, is useless as a research tool; it has no Internet connection, since the Internet is still a few years away. There will be no Googling "how to undo time travel to my past body."

Frustrated, I walk out the front door and across the golden grass that covers a tall, steep hill. I can see Orson Welles in the distance, and I climb up to see him - so much easier in this young, fit body. He greets me like an old friend, rambling on about dramatic structure, even though he died five or six years ago. That's what jerks me free of this reality--that discontinuity. I wake up back in 2016, only to realize that I should be in 2019...

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