From: elizabeg	Date: March 30th, 2004 05:28 pm (UTC)		(LINK TO SPECIFIC ENTRY)
	long thoughts and slipping pronouns

It's strange--I see not just a knot of Now & Then here but this roped and splaying bit of Now/Then/When or Now/Then/Yet.

I mean if one writes in a Now of the books you wish to read, of the pictures you would see, of the facts you would scrutinize, you're writing of a hypothetical future (hence aims hence wishes). And looking back (from another Now) at the Now that's now a Then, well you're seeing something like a past record of a projected future and what does this say about an idea of presence, of presentness, of the stake and state of Now(s)?

You see that past/future play from a position/POV that's neither. God's eye? Maybe. Or maybe sometimes that's the aim or wish. But from my professed detachment am I in a position of mastery over history or a position where I have to see how I have or have not moved from Then to Now as I might have wished? Does my journaling my future make it happen? Do I try by my journaling to make myself a god, to text my way to immortality?

I am also thinking, incidentally, of Benjamin Franklin's autobiography, how he really thought by texting his discipline over himself in the Now the future could come to be expected. But predictive power...?