What I Do and Do Not Remember

I remember sleepovers at Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. I remember being given warm milk just prior to bed, because New York City was an ugly place back in the 80’s, and the chemicals in warm milk help a child sleep through the crack-heads blasting boom boxes and the gunshots splitting the night air. Indeed, I have no recollection of such things. I distinctly remember the big, white bathtub in my Aunt’s bathroom. I remember the low frequency buzz I encountered when I filled it to the top and plunged my head under water. What was that noise? And why could I only hear it when under water? I imagined that as the lights of this vast metropolis were ignited, their tiny filaments would vibrate and give off, in addition to the light, a practically inaudible sound. The massive network of copper pipes in the city’s sewer system, then, would harness all of the little tiny sounds and would, for some unknown reason, conduct them up to this eighth floor apartment, where, with the aid of my water-and-cast-iron-bathtub-receiver, I could go under and listen to my city burn. And glow.

I also remember being happy for the smell of hotdogs in the morning, back before I knew what hotdogs were made of, or cared, back when I would cover everything on my plate in ketchup.

I remember those pink strawberry frosted donuts from Dunkin’ Donuts as belonging to my childhood.

I remember walking upside down on my hands at recess and that one time I fell off the monkey bars and bumped my head. I had heard sports announcers talking about concussions, and I wondered if I had one. Because they never described what one feels like, I couldn’t be sure.

I remember when it was my turn to go up to the second floor kitchen with my nursery school teacher to help make the Kool-Aid. I remember how seriously I took the whole endeavor, how I believed all my fellow students were counting on me to mix it just right, and I remember my teacher lauding my industriousness. I’ve never again felt so self-important. I remember a little Asian girl asking me to marry her, but I can’t remember if I did.

I remember my kindergarten teacher telling us that she had just recovered from several months of blindness after a child hit her in the eye with a block. I remember her shoulder length blonde hair and the way she walked.

I remember my mother’s earnest attempt to teach me how to read 48 hours before my first day of school, so that everyone wouldn’t think I was dumb. I remember that I was then left back in first grade, if only for a day, after receiving straight F’s, at least until the school fixed its clerical error. My mother’s disgrace was only temporary compared to some other mother, who was told that her son’s A’s were actually F’s. And think of the boy, too, his unbridled joy, seeing all of those A’s on his report card, like some miracle brought to life. A Christmas in June.

I remember a Japanese friend named Mitoki in first grade. I remember that his mom made me take off my shoes when I went over to his house. I also remember that he had the neatest house you’ll ever see, which we promptly demolished during an indoor Easter Egg hunt. And I remember the perverse pleasure it gave me, at least to the extent that an eight year old can feel such a thing.

I remember that up to a certain point in elementary school, girls were just these relatively tall people that couldn’t throw a ball very well. I remember the girl in 4th grade that changed that. And I remember when, in sixth grade, I developed my first real crush on a girl, who, interestingly enough, could throw quite well, and who would teach me what it felt like to be reduced to a babbling mess, to be wholly uninteresting in another person’s eyes, and for that not to make one difference.

I remember the blue ring around my god-father’s dark brown irises. When he touched my head, they gave me his name, and told me that I would come to bare his character. I remember how they spoke of him like some hero out of a children’s book, and I wondered how I could live up to that. I still do.

I remember my mom’s eldest brother, how he was tall and sinewy, how he taught me the art of catching butterflies, fireflies, and dragonflies, all kinds of flies really, and how he taught me to swim, if only well enough not to die. We knew, I suspect, that he, for his part, would die soon, but I remember how it crushed my mother. It may have crushed her more than when her own parents, in turn, passed away. Perhaps because his death was first. Or perhaps because it was too early. Or perhaps because she knew that they would have to bury him and that there are few greater injustices in this world than for a parent to bury a child. For my part, I was relatively unaffected by the death of my grandparents, because I did not know them very well. My greatest sadness in the matter was when my mother told me that my dad, ever the stoic, upon receiving news of his mother’s passing, himself wept. Lessons of loss, to this point, I suppose, have been learned vicariously.

I remember the green grass at Shea Stadium in Flushing Meadows. I remember how I’d wear my mitt for all nine innings, hoping to catch a fly ball. This, despite the fact that we were so far up in the upper deck that even Casey himself could not reach us, not even with the benefit of two swings of his Mighty bat. I remember my mom, bless her heart, becoming a Met fan to connect with her son. And I remember penciling in the box score to show her when she returned from work. When I went off to college, she predictably stopped following baseball altogether, but every once in awhile, an old neuron will shake off the dust and fire, and she’ll ask me; “So, how are the Mets doing?” And just like that, it’s 1988 again. And one of these days, I suppose, they’ll win it all. And I’ll call my mom and tell her that we finally did it. The New York Metropolitans. My mother and I. World Champions.

I remember the hot July sun and how sometimes, as if for no reason at all, and without a single cloud in the sky, the rains would mysteriously begin to fall and just as suddenly stop. It was as if someone had nodded off at the control center, if only for a minute.

I remember the smell of snow in the New York air on the afternoon the trade towers were first bombed. My junior high school principle allowed us to go home early.

I remember that beautiful spring afternoon in college, when my favorite philosophy professor announced to the class that a kid in our class, the night previous, had taken his own life. I always wondered if things would have gone differently if, a week prior, when I had seen him at the gas station he worked at, I had told him that of all the kids in that class, he was the only one that I thought ‘got it’ better than I did, that I valued the contributions he made to class, and that one day I hope to be as well-read as him. I remember really feeling that way about him. And I remember, after receiving the news of his passing, wondering the implications of those facts. I cannot remember the kid's name, but I distinctly remember the way he pronounced the name Jean-Paul Sartre.

I remember my small victories on the athletic field much more so than my larger victories in academic arenas. I remember my one and only time on the all-star team in little league. I didn’t have a hit, but I did make a sparkling diving catch to my left from shortstop. It almost made me feel like I belonged there. I remember being on the mound and striking out the last batter in our junior high school championship game. And I remember throwing my mitt skyward, like I had seen on TV, which is the way that I perhaps even rehearsed it in my head, as though I had been waiting for such a moment all my young life, the way a caterpillar might daydream of what it must feel like to fly.

I remember getting a pencil tip stuck in my knee. It shouldn’t have been that big of a deal, because most American pencil manufacturers, by that time, had made the switch from dangerous lead cores to innocuous graphite cores, which would have been all these was to tell, except that we purchased these pencils from an airport in Munich. As a result, there was some concern over whether or not I would make it. My mom, who was then a nurse, and my brother, who would grow up to be a doctor of some renown, performed their first surgery together and extracted the lead tip without having to amputate my leg. They would perform their second surgery together a few weeks later when a black ant somehow managed to bury his head in that same knee. I survived; the ant did not.

I remember family trips to Niagra Falls, Hershey Park, Boston, and Disney World. I remember wanting to go over the Falls in a barrel. I remember eating so much chocolate I became sick. I remember getting caught in a blizzard so bad that we could not see but a foot in front of the windshield. Suddenly, on an otherwise unassuming winter afternoon in New England, our automobile seemed thrust into the perpetual battle between the iridescent and the monochromatic, itself an allegory for Good and Evil, and surely we were doomed, until Spring arrived, as it always does, just in time, to save us. But Spring, herself appearing to have a flair for the dramatic, waits patiently, or doesn't it seem, just long enough for the audience to begin to doubt whether or not She'll make it this time, to question whether or not this Winter will be the one that lasts forever. But I remember that snowy afternoon, before things got better, and how brilliant the inside of the 1988 Toyota Camry looked in a world that had become an overexposed negative. I remember eating dinner in a Princess’ Castle. I remember the weight and immensity of that over-sized wooden goblet, which my seven year old arms steadily tried to touch to my lips.

I do not remember having gotten old. Still, somehow, I can remember an entire lifetime. But this is enough. For now.

Guru Wanted

I’ve recently discovered Guru.com: "the world's largest marketplace for freelance talent." It’s basically an amped-up version of the Craig’s List help-wanted section. You put up a post about what you need and people from all over the world bid for the job. I put up an ad for someone to take over here at Donkey’s Clubhouse. A writer from Thailand named Sirikit agreed to be my ghost writer for 6 Bahts per post, which is roughly equivalent to 20 cents American. Personally, I think I’m overpaying, especially in light of the sub-standard quality of work we’ve grown accustomed to here. But I think she’s the perfect person to replace me. Sirikit is a housewife from the province of Samut Sakhon, enjoys attending Muay Thai (Thai boxing) matches, loves the color purple, is fluent in Thai and has a “working knowledge” of English - all characteristics I would possess, if I was Thai. See, she’s perfect!

Also, Sirikit says that if you’re a reader of this blog, she’ll cut you a deal on any dissertations you need her to write on your behalf. She tells me that she’s an expert on all subjects, and who am I to doubt her?

Anyway, Sirikit, welcome. I’m looking forward to reading what “I” will be writing from now on.

Looking Under the Bed

Have you ever noticed that if you have a particular subject on your mind, you seem to encounter things in life that speak to that subject directly?

Take for instance yesterday’s post about how religion has gone wrong by focusing too much on ideas rather than deeds. This afternoon, I went to Amazon to buy a book of poetry by Tony Hoagland. They suggested that I might like a book by a guy named Bob Hicok, of whom I had never heard. I looked up some of his poetry on Plagairist and found one entitled, “By Their Works,” about the waitress that served the Last Supper. She observes of subsequent patrons: “What a mess they’ve made of their faith” with all their talk of “Rome and silk and crucifications.” She contrasts their manner of speaking with the way Jesus acted toward her. Interesting.

Consider also that today’s episode on my new favorite podcast, The Writer’s Almanac hosted by Garrison Keillor, focused extensively on the work of Karl Popper, who was born on this day in 1902. Though I’m not familiar with Popper’s writing, I learned that in his book The Open Society and Its Enemies, “(Popper) argued that political leaders like Stalin and Hitler shared a mindset with philosophers like Plato and Marx in that they all believed that ideas were more important than individual people.” You’ll note that this is precisely the same criticism I levied against the Church in yesterday’s post: the church’s decision to focus on ideas made their subsequent human rights abuses almost inevitable.

And while the degree of parallel between my post yesterday and this morning’s episode of the Writer’s Almanac is interesting, it is dwarfed by the measure of coincidence shared by this blog and a previous episode of that same show. I went back and listened to the episode from June 18th, which, if you scroll down, you will note was my birthday. On that day, the poet being featured was no other than one Tony Hoagland, whose book I was to purchase this morning, when this whole ball of happenstance starting tumbling. Not only that! But the last time I mentioned Amazon, or Tony Hoagland for that matter, was back on August 21st, shortly after I purchased the book containing the very poem Garrison Keillor would later read on my birthday. The title of the book, if you recall, is, dun dun dun. Donkey Gospel. That’s right, Garrison Keillor, who, by at least one internet account, is the son of Batman, knew to read from Donkey Gospel to commemorate my birthday!

Because all happy accidents desire to be ruined by explanation, and because I have Rives’ presentation - also from yesterday’s post – on my mind, I’m working on a theory that Garrison Keillor is hiding under my bed and stealing my thoughts. He then sells them to Amazon or the American Poetry Foundation after somehow employing Google advertising. I’m still working out the kinks, but I think I’m on to something.

Dan Gilbert, in anticipation of this very post, I suspect, wrote a book that attempts to explain our tendency to attend to aspects of our environment that relate to matters already on the brain: “The brain and the eye may have a contractual relationship in which the brain has agreed to believe what the eye sees, but in return the eye has agreed to look for what the brain wants.” Gilbert draws his conclusion based on years of empirical research, which, to him, suggests that people have a very difficult time being truly objective, because their pre-cognitive biases determine which facts to attend to and which to ignore. This may, in part, explain why humans have a tendency to stumble upon so many coincidences. A fair point. However, in my defense, I’d like to point out that most of Gilbert’s research is conducted via questionnaires distributed to Harvard undergraduate students, and as far as I know, he is yet to look under my bed to determine what is or is not there.

Conspiracies Abound!

Who is a Christian?

I don’t know how closely some of you read my writing, but you may have noticed that I’ve again started going to church. You may have also noted my continued insistence that I am not Christian. The implication, then, is that I believe that simply going to church does not a Christian make. So, what does?

I’ve looked at how the term “Christian” is defined by those that say they are Christians, which has been an informative undertaking. The first thing we can say is that there is no universally accepted definition for the term. Rather, the term Christianity is defined along the same lines as criteria for membership into an exclusive club. A Baptist preacher may ask you, “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?” Your answer to this question will determine whether or not he will allow you to join his club, or, in the alternative, as was my case, he will wish you well on your path to eternal damnation. A Catholic priest may ask you, “Have you been baptized under the Trinity in the Roman Catholic Church?” Other definitions may be premised on whether or not you have received the grace of the Lord, whether or not you have turned away from sin, whether or not you have entered into a friendship with Jesus, whether or not your heart is imbued with the Holy Spirit, whether or not you accept the New and Old testaments as God’s revelation, or any combination of these and others.

It appears that most definitions focus on what you believe, rather than what you do. If addressed at all, what you do is, at most, given subordinate importance; most often, if is left out entirely. This is most apparent with creed-centered definitions of Christianity. These definitions seem to take a verbatim line or two directly out of a Church’s creed, usually the Nicene or Apostle’s. They will ask you, for instance, whether or not you believe that Jesus Christ was the son of God (Nicene, line 6), whether or not we are saved through him (line 13), whether or not he was of a virgin birth (line 16), whether or not he was resurrected in fulfillment of prophecy (line 20), etc. (A survey of these definitions and others can be found here at the Religious Tolerance website. )

I believe that creed-centered definitions of Christianity are largely a vestige of the early years of the Church, when such matters of faith were wholly unsettled, and, as such, they are largely an historical accident. The council at Nicea met, in large part, to address the divinity of Christ, which, presumably, was still up for debate, by then, some 300 years after his death. After Nicea decreed that Jesus was, indeed, divine, another council convened at Constantinople to reconcile this divinity with his humanity. Still another council met at Ephesus to address the nature of Mary, and still another to address the nature of the Holy Spirit, and so on. By this time, we were some five or six hundred years into the “Era of the Lord.” The findings of these various councils were codified in Creeds or the like and belief or non-belief in them separated Christians who belonged to the fledgling Catholic Church, which history shows would win out in the end, from the Christian “heretics” that did not. That which lives on in these creeds, and that which is reflected in creed-centered definitions of Christianity, then, is not a reflection of the views of all early-Christians, nor even of Jesus Christ himself, but instead, they document the points of disconnect, rather than the points of overlap, between the Catholic Church and the various competing positions as they existed some 1,500 to 2,000 years ago or at least several hundred years ago during the less distant schisms of the once Holy Roman Empire.

That is to say, rather than focus on the heart of what it means to be Christian – that which united all Christians and still does – the definitions focus on the very outer layer of what it means to be Christian, the point at which subtle difference arise between one mode of reckoning and another. While it was perhaps understandable, or at least forgivable, for the early church to be consumed with such subtle differences, it is largely anachronistic for us to continue to do so today. To premise the main thrust of Christianity in general on the few sectarian differences we have, then or now, I would argue, is to miss the point almost entirely.

But understanding Christianity as a set of beliefs, as opposed to, for instance, a lived experience, leaves one open to far greater pitfalls than the largely academic point raised above. One need only recall that some of the greatest injustices the world over have been committed under The Cross in the name of Jesus Christ. The living history of the Church was, and continues to be, a bloody tale. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu points out, “It was Christians, you know, not Pagans, who were responsible for the Holocaust. It was Christians, not Pagans, who lynched people here in the South, who burned people at the stake, frequently in the name of this Jesus Christ.” Tutu’s description does not even make mention of the Crusades, Inquisitions, the various other attempts at violent proselytization, nor the myriad Christian justifications once given for slavery or the oppression of women. As philosopher Blaise Pascal once cautioned, “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” History has been Pascal’s witness. And it is an observation similar to Pascal’s which led Ghandi to say of Christianity, “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” What these three criticism have in common is that unlike most definitions of Christianity, they focus on the acts of man, rather than his beliefs.

What good are any of our religious beliefs, in Christ or otherwise, if we simply use them to bludgeon one another? What good is the practice of any religion, if it too easily becomes a practice of hatred, intolerance, and violence?

Curiously, the historical Christ himself spent little, if any, time discussing most of the questions that many Christians now hold to be the central tenets of their belief. Indeed, we know very little, if anything, about what Jesus Christ himself believed. For instance, he was reluctant to address the question of his divinity, made no mention of the virginity of his mother, left it unclear whether his resurrection would be bodily or spiritual, made no mention of the Holy Trinity, made no promise that his disciples would inerrantly record and re-tell his story, and indeed, he left it wholly unclear what role, if any, your beliefs in any of these matters had in your salvation. Moreover, there is even the suggestion that Jesus was intentionally evasive and unclear about such things, so that we would not know what to believe! Still, somehow, most Christians seem to think that following Jesus is “about” a few particular beliefs in God, of which Jesus himself was largely silent, vague, or contradictory.

I, having seen its effect throughout history and in the present day, have a hard time subscribing to such a view of Christianity. Christianity should not be viewed as a club to which you gain membership if you meet certain standards of belief. One should not “become” Christian the moment one decides to write one’s name on a roster and pay membership dues to a local church or attend service in a particular building once a week. Such an “in the club” or “out of the club” mentality is precisely that which allows those “in” the club to hate, oppress, and exact violence against those “outside” of it.

I’ve already hinted that I believe Christianity should be defined, ideally speaking, as an action-centered-way-of-life, something which is to be practiced, not arrived at. Indeed, such a view comports nicely with Jesus’ actual teachings and practice. Jesus teaches that the two most important laws are these: (1) love your God and (2) love your neighbor as yourself. In exploring what it means to ‘love your God,’ John writes, “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.” Elsewhere, Jesus tells us, “As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” That is to say, the manner by which Christendom will be announced to the world, or in another word, defined, is the love Christians have for their brothers. To the extent that Christianity is reducible to definition, it should be thus: the attempt by man to emulate God’s love for us by loving our fellow man.

Not only would such a definition better comport with Jesus’ actual teachings, its practice would avoid many of the pitfalls that has beset creed-centered conceptions of Christianity for the past two millennia. Of course, I don’t believe that such a view will have any traction. After all, healing the world with love is not nearly as profitable a venture as selling faith and church doctrine to those clamoring simply to get into heaven. Preaching the Golden Rule will not make men rich, nor with it build empires. Founding religions on blind faith in the incomprehensible, however, seems to have the opposite effect. Simply loving one another has never been enough, and the lure of far off heavens with streets paved in gold, and hope of divine intercession in the way of trumpet bearing angels, and trying to put one’s faith in logically contradictory church doctrine of which no man can make any sense at all have each proven to be too seductive for man to resist. But one has to wonder if God will not say of it, “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.”

So, how is a Christian to be defined? Put it this way. I like to think that, if there is such a place as heaven, someone like Ghandi would be there, even though he did not believe in the God of Abraham, nor did he confess to the teachings of any Christian Church. Ironically, by his own admission, he wasn’t a Christian, but, in my mind at least, he was, nevertheless, such a good example of what a Christian should be. Ghandi had a pure heart and loved his fellow man much like the historical Jesus. Should it really be of any consequence that he subscribed to a different set of beliefs? Should it really be of any consequence that he did not say the right thing? No. Let the heart of a man be the seat for his God, let it also be his measure. Words, and doctrines, and professions of belief and all things originating from the lips - of these things the hearts of man place little value, and in these things the gods of man put little Faith.

Back to the Start

I met this girl and I would like to tell you how it happened, if not for you, then for me, just so I have it on record, just so the historical revisionists cannot take their grand liberties with it. It was three weeks ago this past Sunday. I was walking out of the front door of church as she came bounding down the stairs in front of the side door. I made some comment about how I didn’t know you could use that door. Admittedly, it was not the best ice-breaker in the world, because such a comment doesn’t really lead to a larger conversation. It did not. And we said goodbye four seconds later.

And in some parallel dimension, that was that. I never saw her again, she never provided me with this very blog-fodder, she would not be cause for any sleepless nights, nor would she occupy anything more than a footnote in my life’s story, if even that. But in this version of the story, the actual one not the imagined one belonging to some far off dimension, for reasons that are not yet immediately apparent to either of us, our end was not meant to follow so closely to our beginning. And so it was that as she meandered through the parking lot in search for her car, we crossed paths again, this time more substantively, which led to my getting her email address, which in turn flowered into our first date, which in turn, blossomed into our first non-date, but I’m getting ahead of myself, and I cannot help but feel like I’ve left something important out already. So let me, as must so often be the case, take a step back before we can again move forward.

You can understand my initial temptation to start the story at the point in time when we first said hello to one another. It’s a nice, neat, easily-demarcated starting point. But that’s not really where the story starts. The story really starts about 200 seconds before I first said hello to her, when my gaze, quite accidentally, fell upon her gaze, if only for an instant, as I walked out of a classroom and into a hallway inside the church, the outside of which was the scene of our first hello. We looked at each other for perhaps a tenth of a second, so small a sliver or time that it’s a wonder I even noticed, a fraction so insignificant that, though I’m yet to ask her, I doubt she even remembers. And the question that pre-occupies me at the present moment is: how much of what is to come of us was determined in that tenth of a second?

As I may have mentioned in a previous post, Socrates once said that all knowledge is merely remembering that which we once forgot. He said there was a moment in time, at birth perhaps, maybe just before, when we knew everything that we would ever know. The whole of our lives, peppered as it is with ah-ha moments and episodes of déjà vu, then, is spent recollecting and reconstituting that scrapbook of knowledge, which in some sense, was already complete before we started the journey. Suppose the same is true of relationships and that moment of omniscient clarity is just before you say hello, in that tenth of a second 200 seconds before everything else. Maybe, then, the rest of it, all that comes after that initial meeting of eyes - the questions and answers, the tentative admissions, the small graces we bestow on one another, the tiny gifts, the profound warmth and occasional sadness, the words we choose, the deeds we conspire to, maybe the whole course of our lives together – amounts only to this: simply returning to that initial feeling, trying to remember what it was that you once knew about that person, so that we may finally arrive at the place, wherever that may be, where we can say to ourselves, “Ah yes, this thing we’ve become, this is how I envisioned it, even way back when.”

It's like a doctor asking you to rate the intensity of sensation deriving from a phantom limb on a scale of one to ten, one being the lowest and ten being the highest, and you then telling him, “Doc, it’s not like a number at all, but it’s a lot like that feeling you get when you find yourself singing along to a song in a foreign language whose meaning you have not yet had the chance to look up.” And if the whole of it all amounts merely finding meaning for the words you’ve already somehow memorized, feeling again that which you’ve felt before, in a word, re-living that tenth of a second, then can we really say that there are any surprises, in life or in love?

Of course, I’m not arguing that we’re living out some pre-destined fate, that we’re merely puppets in the theatre of the gods arriving at tragedy or comedy for the exclusive purpose of Cosmic entertainment. I believe that we do have a great degree of control over our own lives, perhaps even more so that we typically realize. This is why I cannot describe the facts that are about to befall us or the other ones that will escape us. These things have not happened yet, and, thus, I cannot have knowledge of them. What I am suggesting, however, is that our emotional response to the facts, or to the world, or to its people, or to a pretty girl in a parking lot may be decided in the blink of an eye, in the tenth of a second, so quickly that it does not even rise to the level of consciousness. Moreover, the mechanism for determining our emotional response, our metaphorical heart, has been shaped through natural selection for millions of years, and it includes the love songs of the amoeba-people, the poetry of the frog-people, and the story of how Lucy first fell in love, all things belonging to some distant past, all things that once were and already have been, which now belong to some forgotten dream, or exist as only shadow of a thought once held.

And how quickly we dismiss this wisdom or even forget that it even existed. Our eyes and ears are turned outward, our mouths parade out word upon word, and that is where we look for life’s lessons, in externalities. But every once in awhile, in the ancient struggle for self-understanding, there comes along a rogue voice, a Socrates, who reminds us to look inward, rather than outward, to our heart of hearts, to find what we already know. Some hundreds of years before I found myself unable to articulate an answer to her question of why I am even bothering with her, Blaise Pascal wrote, “The heart has its reasons, of which reason knows nothing.” The Bard, as if himself humming the chorus to the love song of the amoeba-people from eons ago, instructs me, “Go to your bosom: Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know.”

As I tumble backward through time, trying to gain my bearings, I realize that things would appear far less complicated if only I knew how this would end, and I even realize where I should look for answers. Still, of that prescient wise old heart and of its secret wisdom whispered during that tenth of a second, I have no recollection.