Only Now

I occupy the center of a point in my mind where no one else can be.

My eyes face one direction only, so I must imagine what exactly goes on all around me.

Only perceiving certain colors, I am blind to all the other hues scattering around me.

My two ears hear vibrations of the air around me, an ambiance of mixed frequencies,

but not nearly all the existing tones around me.

Likewise, my senses of smell, taste, and touch are severely limited

in their ability to discern and differentiate aspects of any environment I occupy.

I can never, ever sense everything all at once since my perception of the world is 

always severely limited and edited by the discretly focused directionality of my senses.

My memory of all experience is further limited by the “outline form” of my brain

in its organizing and storing of these edited versions of my existence, 

and, like a documentary film, not nearly reality

but pointing to it from a prejudiced point-of-view.

So, I must rely on others around me to give me clues about my reality

since I can never experience it from outside my own senses with me as a part of it.

Like looking out of a slightly fogged window, I am separated from everything else

by the wall of my own physical senses and perceptions.

That is as close as I can ever get to what really happens 

within my mind, within my body, and within the world.

Now is the only reality.

The moment, the present, immediate being, that is reality.

Past and future reside in my imagination and are as accurate a representation of the world, 

bygone or to come, as a pencil sketch, an audio recording of a song,

a photograph, or words on a page - symbols of what is truly real.

They manifest as grain, as texture, a particular point-of-view, or an artistic treatment, 

just like the recollection of my memories or my visions of the future,

and thus, embody unreality (not reality).

As human animals, our best “trick” seems to be remembering the past

and projecting our ideas into the future through creating stories within our present minds,

with symbols structured by the literary device of a beginning, a middle, and an end.

But, we tend to confuse the useful symbol/story with what is real.

So, stories are useful fabrications

for remembering personal occurrences

or communicating abstract ideas to each other.

Otherwise, in reality, there is no beginning nor end.

Only now.

Billy Radd

Asheville