On the Road Again and Time Gone By

I have pushed by myself at least a hundred times now.
I can't be mad at myself though.
I mean, its my fault I dropped my keys 12 minutes ago.
The quickest way back 12 minutes ago is directly behind me.
So I've just got to push back by myself to when I was 12 minutes ago and grab my keys.

That seems to be a real problem for me since I came here.
Wiggling all about up and down through time is awfully complicated.
I'm still working really hard to get used to traveling through time as if it were a walk in the park. Everyone else seems to have gotten along pretty well with it, but it's still just a bit too much before me.

Before, After.
Uuuggghhhhhhh.
Sorry, you don't have to tell me again. I know there is no such thing as before and after.
Well there is.

But I can't keep myself away from the ancient future.
It's just so much bigger.
I have had my 21st Birthday over 400 times now.
It kinda makes sense now why I was so hungover the next day.

I've also seen the birth of my grandchildren over a thousand times!
But I still love to come back to my days in my twenties.
We were all so carefree in those days.

Don't get me wrong, it was no easy time.
We went through some pretty nasty ill times.
But it was all worth it.
We were poor as hell, but we were the best of friends.
And it just didn't matter if you were eating noodles with whatever vegetables the market faired that week. We played music. And music was different when you lived your life in a line.

It actually made sense, and it moved you, literally.
When I hear music in the ancient future, its a completely different experience.
I see the beginning, the end, the silence before and after, its all one big picture.
I see it as a painting on the wall. I can't live in that song any more.
It can move me, but not in the same way as before.
Thats the thing about trying to move back out of the ancient future.
This area of time and space has a gravity to it much like the planet Earth.
Once you have settled on the ancient future, it takes significant effort to escape the gravitational pull of time that is this heavy.

And now a song isn't what it used to be. To feel the way a song used to make me feel, I have to live a hundred lifetimes and they are all only mine in a passing moment. I feel the emotions and experiences of a whole people as if they were blades of grass brushing against me. And then... they are gone.

And I am at my 92nd birthday.
My keys are here.
You see, by now I have left my keys so many places I don't have to travel too far in any direction to find them again.

Although I was looking for my keys 12 minutes ago, I have found them 45 years later.

I didn't quite have to run into myself so many times this way.

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