Tag Archives: Future

A Letter from My Future Self of 2038: NaPoWriMo, 2018, Day 11

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 A Letter from My Future Self of 2038

Dear Remi,

Remember eight years ago, when you took this new name for yourself?  I notice you’ve slipped back into the “old” name (Judy) and the “old” you that you professed just five years before to no longer identify with.  What happened?  Was it merely the resistance of old friends to call you by this new name? Or was it that you slowly slipped back into being that person–more laconic, giving in to the heaviness and inactivity of age?  Did you also give up on romance and change and the excitement of the possibility of forward progress?  Did you decide to stay where it is easier with an established routine, people to clean your house and wash your clothes and mow your grass and clean your pool?

I’m wondering if you are thinking about how that is working out for you. I see you even more tied down than before–five cats instead of one, making plans to start more programs for the young people of your community, but will this be enough?  That sense of urgency and of time passing that has kept you vaulting from your bed and running outside to try to breathe at night—is it caused by any physical condition or is it me, prodding you to be young for as long as you can and to experience more before you sink into that routine that is the reward for doing all that you meant to do in this lifetime? Is it time to retire and to smooth your own pathway, or is it still time to leap over barriers such as this barrier of yourself and go boldly out into the world to see what else is there?

I’m not trying to prod or push you or suggest the way.  I am, after all, a figment of your imagination as surely as your present view of yourself is.  I understand that two foot surgeries in two years slowed you down and changed your exercise patterns as well as the patterns of your day.  I also realize that friends moved away or moved into new lives and that this also made you turn inwards.  There are reasons of one sort or another for everything we do.  We all have excuses.  At 90 years old, I have excuses, too.  I know where you ended up but I also know that there are a limitless number of me’s.

There is the me that succumbed to Alzheimer’s, as your sister did.  There is the me who moved to Italy and moved off into a new life that I only hint at here.  There is the me who has devoted herself for the past 20 years to making her small town a better place to grow up in.  There is the me who finally took off in that boat and went all the remaining places there were to go.  There is the me who grew grumpy and reclusive and eventually became dumber than her Smart TV.

There is even the implausible me who did all the “shoulds” and got her other books published—who maybe even got back on the agent/publisher treadmill and did it the “right” way. There is the me who found more romance, the one who converted her entire house into a dog kennel or cat sanctuary, the one who built the house on the adjoining piece of land and hired a nurse/housekeeper and invited her friends to come grow old with her.  There are so many potential me’s that I hope it is making your head swim and that I hope will make you think about what you want to do with the remaining 30 or so years of your life.

Things are not over.  In the first thirty years of your life, you grew up, went to summer camp, counseled at summer camp, went to University, sailed around the world on a boat and saw all else that life could be, got your masters degree, emigrated to Australia, taught for two years, traveled for four months through southeast Asia and Africa, moved to Africa and had various adventures, good and bad.  Fell in love, taught school in Addis Ababa, moved back to the U.S., taught for 7 more years, fell in love, built a house, edited a creative writing journal for teens, traveled to China and Great Britain and Hawaii.

Then you had a dream that knocked you into a recognition of your subconscious.  You quit your job, moved to Orange County, CA, wrote on the beach, moved to L.A., fell in love, studied film production and screenwriting at UCLA, worked in a Hollywood agency, joined a writer’s workshop, joined an actor’s studio, worked for Bob Hope, gave poetry readings, was co-editor of a poetry journal, fell in love again, married, moved to the Santa Cruz mountains, became an artist, traveled and did art and craft shows for 14 years, became the curator of an art center, lost your husband, moved to Mexico, self-published four books, traveled, taught English and art, fell in love a few more times, started a poetry series.

This is what can be done in thirty years.  So, what are you going to do with the next thirty?

Love, Remi–twenty years older.

The NaPoWriMo prompt today is: a poem that addresses the future, answering the questions “What does y(our) future provide? What is your future state of mind? If you are a citizen of the “union” that is your body, what is your future “state of the union” address?”  This rewrite of a piece written three years ago seems to fill the bill, except it was pointed out to me afterwards that it isn’t a poem!  Can I get by saying it is a prose poem?  If not, this former piece which is a poem also answers the same prompt:  https://judydykstrabrown.com/2018/03/15/provoke/

 

Answered

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The prompt: Open your nearest book to page 82. Take the third full sentence on the page, and work it into a post somehow. (The book nearest to me and its quote is given below:)

What happens to someone like her as she gets older?
–from Luck, by Joan Barfoot

Answered

She loses her balance, starts to fall.
Once in the kitchen, three times in the hall.
Finds it harder to remember, spends more time alone.
Speaks her mind more freely, less likely to atone.
She starts attracting cats that come inside and do not leave.
Wears frays in her clothing–hemline, neckline, sleeve.
Starts forgetting passwords–sometimes the names of friends.
Her search for keys and glasses never really ends.
Starts waking in the nighttime to contemplate her death.
At midnight, has to go outside to try to catch her breath.
Counts the years before her instead of those behind.
She could live to one hundred if fate is being kind.

Will she live her last years with sister, lover, friend;
or will animal companions help her meet her end?
Will anybody mourn her? Does she want them to?
Will she be remembered by a poem or two?
Will anybody read her after she is dead?
Will all her future poetry die here in her head?
Will her blog named “lifelessons” finally cease to be?
Will they give the name away for a modest fee?
Will they erase her blog spot, burn her files of poems?
Cause a glut on EBay of her leftover tomes?
If she sells a book or two every other year
where will Amazon send the money when she isn’t here?

One day in the future in three thousand two
will Zee, (some bored teenager, with nothing else to do)
go onto the internet connected to her head,
close her eyes and throw herself backwards on her bed
and stumble on an errant line that floats through cyberspace,
and Google it to try to find its author, time and place?
“What happens to someone . . . ?” are the words that Zee has found.
Her fingers start to twitch as she is driven to expound.
The printer prints the words she says without her further action.
Tied into her speech and thought–spontaneous reaction.
” . . . like her as she gets older?” is printed on the wall.
For there’s no paper in the world. No paper left at all!
Her face is flushed, her eyes dilate, her eyes first squint, then blink.
This random line floating in space has provoked her to think.
First she’ll finish cyber school, then link her living pod
with a blowout sort of guy with a gorgeous bod.
They’ll make links with other blogs and party with their friends
for a couple hundred years before they meet their ends.
She thinks back on the interbrain to look for thoughts and links.
Lets her mind go soft as into cybermind she sinks.
Looking for her future job. She knows it’s there to see.
Time being just a concept to wander through for free.
She plops onto a webpage from two thousand fifteen,
all the information still there and easily seen.
The line Zee thought jumps out at her. She sees it’s not her own.
It’s been used two times before and now it seems it’s flown
into her thoughts to sort her out and give her a direction.
As she reads on, she catches on to this writer’s inflection
in every word she writes and when she gets to the post’s end,
she goes on reading through her life and starts to make a friend.
After two days of reading, she winds up at the start
knowing every detail in this blogger’s heart.
Then she goes back to where she started and sees her doubts and fears.
It’s then that she fast-forwards to the blogger’s final years
and sees the truth of everything that’s going to transpire.
The failing health, the hopeful mood, the ad, “Wanted to Hire
an interesting friend to talk to while I fall asleep.
One capable of caring and thoughts that wander deep.
Someone to be there some nights when it seems that I might leave
for one last time this life that’s loosening its warp and weave.
No heavy lifting needed–a weighted thought or two
is all that I find necessary. Weighing thoughts will do.”

Zee zoomed back to the entry that had drawn her thoughts at first.
The very sentence that had caused her gloomy thoughts to burst.
January was the month and 14 was the day
The year 2015, when she’d been second to say
those fateful words and now Zee, too, was thinking just the same–
moving to the comments to add her words and name.
“Dear Lifelessons,” she’d say to her, and then add her assurance
that everafter she would be her safety and insurance.
That she would never die alone or be bereft of friend
for Zee was vowing here and now she’d be there at the end.
She’d looked ahead and so she knew that she would keep this pledge.
She’d known the center of this life and now she knew its edge.
She knew the dates that she’d be needed in the years ahead.
She made a list and filed it in a clear spot in her head.
And then she went on thinking what those words meant in her life.
Would she be a scholar, an actress and a wife?
Would she produce children and would they be there for her?
That sentence found in cyberspace created quite a stir.
But all her dreams it prompted came true enough, what’s more
she kept her date with Lifelessons in 2054.

                                                                            –Judy Dykstra-Brown, Lifelessons, 2015

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In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Connect the Dots.”