As I inch my way toward a long anticipated halfway point — six months of old house journaling — I’m finding that time, more than sixteen and a half years, has begun to blur. Excavating and analyzing more than a decade and a half of Rosslyn notes and artifacts and drawings and plans and journal entries has been an immersive and fascinating journey. It’s also become increasingly disorienting. Time has become unreliable. Kaleidoscopic. I find myself wondering, did that happen yesteryear or yesterday?
If I were an historian or a detective, this protean timeline would be problematic. Big time.
But I’m not. And the bug is beginning to feel like a feature, as my techy friends like to joke.
Postcard of Yesteryear or Yesterday
Three postcards above. Rosslyn’s boathouse. Yesteryear of yesterday. The version numbers tell the story, but the illusion is an invitation to join me in the timeless sanctuary which is Rosslyn, Historic Essex, the Adirondack Coast, Lake Champlain,…
We live amidst history. Ancient history and recent history. Forgotten history. History happening anew, now. And now. Layers of Rosslyn’s past, present, and future intermingle. Sometimes they resolve themselves. Sometimes they coalesce. A kaleidoscopic collage emerges, vanishes, re-emerges transformed. Again. Timeless. A thousand iterations. More. A mercurial montage. Sequencing. Re-sequencing.
I invite you to join me at the boathouse for a midwinter mallard jacuzzi or a midsummer double rainbow. Maybe slip into the Riley for a nostalgic cruise. Backward in time. Forward in mind, interweaving our collective imagination. Windows down, wind in our hair, wandering Essex byways. 19th century and 21st century, hand-in-hand. Yesteryear or yesterday.
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