Then is not Now

I am on my third pint. I am still anxious. I blame it on the drugs. The alcohol is supposed to have erased it.

Surrealist thought diarrhoea. Focus. It is Danielle’s fault. She had started talking about writing’s relationship with time. I’ve heard it before. This time the profundity is amplified.

The writer’s now is not the reader’s now. Their now is the reader’s past and the reader’s now is the writer’s future. And each reader has a different now. Writers are writing for as many future nows as there are readers. And each reader slides into their own personal world. To write is to create a multiverse.

The multiverse is my corollary. There is a lost thought between her talk and my deduction. A parenthetical that has slipped away.

“Are you local?”

I try finding a satisfying translation for retrouvailles. Literally it is a re-finding, you find someone again. My brain takes a detour and attempts a description: Two people comparing how much each has changed in four years. Danielle tells the waitress it is a reunion.

I hate it when the mind starts to race. Ideas streaming in quicker than I can process. Puddles breaking their invisible barriers, following gravity, streaming. A thought river. Ideas unsorted, ungrouped and unranked. I grab one at random.

A picture is worth a thousand words. You can paint a picture with a few words. Words are exponential.