“The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens.”
–Rainer Maria Rilke
History has a direction, but not a destination.
At any point along its river, you can hear its many songs.
It rushes in progress, dribbles in grief.
It is all one river.
You long to know where you are headed,
But all walk backward in this life.
You see only the past before you.
All sight is hindsight.
The past is the stories you chose to record
The parts you could crumb into words and pictures.
A fragment of what happened; much is unwitnessed.
The rest washed away in the flood.
This picture of the past keeps changing,
Like a watercolor unwilling to dry.
New paint daubed with each backward step.
The layers below buried by progress.
The future, meanwhile, is behind you.
You are not entitled to know the destination
Because there is none; only direction.
Tentative backward steps into darkness.
History shapes the potential futures you can step into.
The stories change the shape of the river behind you,
You are a conduit that bends story into possibility.
And you are made of history too: a drip of watercolor paint.
You might find it easier holding someone’s hand.
Painting history together transforms the kaleidoscope.
Disconnected fragments become navigable story,
Which means you must find your people.
You will paint this canvas together.