punctuality.

outside my window the san francisco sky radiates with its usual brilliant white, while the gray-brown pavement glitters here and there with tiny puddles from the rain which seems to have fallen continuously over the past few holiday weeks. tan pine needles lay scattered across the ground, blown dowm from the spikey sprawling evergreen which towers over the backyard - once a miniature table-top christmas tree planted when i was just a kid. it's chilly today, i think to myself, as i walk around the house, where the indoor is colder than the outdoor and opposite my chicagoan apartment probably gathering snow on its windowsill. small puffs of steam faintly emanate as i exhale in my room, conjuring up the presence of christmas ghosts, still lingering in the air and not yet ready to leave for the new year. in two days i too will not yet be ready to leave, preparing to board my plane back to school, back to the cold, and back to the veritable prison cell secured by walls made by paper and bars made of text. it seems time flies when i don't pay attention, and the present becomes just as shocking as seeing old elementary and high school peers again, chatting about how far we've come... just as shocking as the little table-top christmas tree now as tall as the house.

a year ago, i had just finished my bachelor's degree, submitted my applications to graduate school, and wondering where i would be in a year, crossing my fingers that just someone somewhere would accept me. two years ago, i was celebrating the holidays on the beach in southern cal, enjoying my leisure with friends, many of whom have always remained in fond memory, others whom i can now only miss. four year ago, i had just finished my first quarter of undergrad with awful grades and unsure how i was ever going to survive another four years and completely lost in the city of los angeles. eight years ago, i had just completed my first few months of high school, getting through watching red asphalt in drivers ed, being yelled at in jrotc, and contemplating joining the swim team, and sixteen years ago, i has just finished my first few months of first grade, having played the part as a toy soldier [with the rest of the class] in the school's annual christmas play and just barely getting to know the same people and faces i would see again in sixteen years for drinks and conversation in a bar. it seems time flies when i don't pay attention to where the conversations shift from cooties to marriages and boogers to the maze of medicare-part-d.

as i look out across the backyard, a tiny rocky-sandy lot once so big and foreign, now overrun with the green tender shoots of weeds, i can hardly force myself to recall what it was like to play on the grassy lawn that once sprouted, the ping-pong table that once was, and the makeshift piñata that once formed the centerpiece to my 6th birthday party after kindergarten graduation. turning my attention back to the matter at hand - a degree paper proposal i am assigned to complete over holiday, i am brought sharply back to present reality. a quick glance at the clock tells me two hours have just elapsed, while my mind wandered and i watched the rain. time sure flies when i'm not paying attention.

the past is of no importance. the present is of no importance. it is with the future that we have to deal. for the past is what man should not have been. the present is what man ought not to be. the future is what artists are.
: wilde.