We all know how soon is now. But how long is it?
Now. What an insane concept. Now. It’s a word that’s over before it exits your mouth and you stumble onto a new now.
Why am I thinking of now now?
It started with a few perfectly placed words in a novel by Christopher Isherwood. I reread his novel A Single Man this week because it was the anniversary of his January 4th death. He died 39 years ago, back in 1986. Yes, you read that right…1986 was 39 years ago.
I’ve been obsessed, ever since reading those words, about the concept of NOW. Is that a writer thing? Hearing a certain word that you’ve heard possibly a hundred thousand times over the course of your life…but suddenly it smacks you differently and you just can’t seem to let it go? Does this happen to non-writers? This obsession with simple everyday words?
I started thinking, at first, about the way he described NOW being over…and how each now has an exact moment in time before it vanishes…or some such thing. I’m completely paraphrasing, but only because my mind left the page the very second I began to obsess about the concept of NOW and its relationship to time and how it is impossible to pin down because the moment it arrives it has already left.
See…I can’t stop.
Anyway, when Isherwood wrote those thoughts about NOW…he was in one. A now. He was right there, right then. And then that moment was gone. He witnessed a lot of NOWs but then he was gone, never again to be a part of a now.
But is that true when you create works and leave them behind? Did I breathe life back into the man when I began to reread his novel. Was he alive in my nows as I read? Certainly he was alive as he wrote the words I was reading. Did his essence spring momentarily back to life as I read those words?
A coworker whom I worked with for over 36 years passed away yesterday (or rather through the night the day before—unless of course it was after midnight). He was a little troll of a man…a nuisance and a weirdo. But a strong unstoppable troll…like the kind that could snap your neck without breaking a sweat.
The relationship with coworkers is so bizarre, isn’t it? There were times over the years when I had stopped listening to the words coming out of his mouth and I simply wished he would stop talking and walk away. Literally…a mantra would run through my thoughts drowning out his words. Please go away, please go away…STOP TALKING.
He was a bit of a redneck. He was loud and uneducated. Just a pain in the ass.
But he was also there every day. We talked all the time. Every day. I saw him more than I’ve seen many many people I would have cared to see more often. The thing about annoyances is that they grow on you. You build a history together. You carry these moments, these nows that nobody else but the two of you have.
And then a now comes when they are gone. Forever. And it’s a moment, this now…this now where you realize that all of humanity will share this now…this moment of HERE NOT HERE. It doesn’t matter if we’re rich or paupers, if we’re famous or obscure, if we’re liked or hated. We will all have our final NOW. And at that instant when we leave, we will never again have another now. Now will cease to exist, even as a concept.
I miss him already, this coworker who drove me batty. Everything is weird, isn’t it?
Thank you, Christoper Isherwood, for making me obsess about a stupid meaningless word.
Morrissey drawled, “When you say, “It’s gonna happen now” well, when exactly do you mean?”
I don’t think he ever asks the question HOW SOON IS NOW in the song???? Does he? I can no longer recall. Anyway…now is now. And now it’s over.
We beat on…
Stay tuned tomorrow, when I obsess over the word trinket. What exactly does it mean?
Meanwhile, please consider keeping me alive in the now(s) in which you read my new novel:
Pick up your copy of I WILL TELL THE NIGHT today! KINDLE or PAPERBACK!
KEVIN CRAIG 