86 95 15 30

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As printed in the novel 10:04 by Ben Lerner

1995
they called the year the future was to arrive
but back in ‘95
we thought we were standing on the threshold to the end of time

and we still do

so what’s wrong with living in the past
it just happens to be the place I saw you last

“1995″ by Molly Nilsson, released in 2015

In life everything is timing. In movies everything is timed. Emotional deadlines set up the urgency to actually act for time. You can’t take too long because We don’t have that long.

Masha Tupitsyn, Feb. 17, 2015

from David Letterman’s final show, May 20, 2015; clips taken from 1982-2015

As an ending, it is both too little and too much. It is too much because it is too little. It takes me back to a house in Illinois, to vacations in Texas, to nights in the San Fernando Valley, to life at college, to San Francisco. Conversations with my father or with friends about this event or that event on Letterman. The risk and experimentation and excitement. The thrill of staying up until 12:30 and having no idea what we might see that night.

I can’t watch that montage again. The sadness of the reduction and compression, all the things left out, the things on the cutting room floor of Letterman’s show and my life. What are we left with. What does it all come down to. What’s really important. It can’t be everything.

Me, May 23, 2015

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Around the time the storm struck Cuba, devastating Santiago, the box of books arrived at my apartment. I hesitated, my eagerness evaporating, then opened the lid and saw the handsome copies of To the Future. Professionally bound, it had a certain heft; it did not feel like a vanity project, but like a real children’s book. I was excited to think how excited Roberto would be.

Roberto, however, was not in a celebratory mood. I  kept congratulating him enthusiastically on becoming a published author, but to no avail. Instead, he wanted to talk about what he referred to as the “superstorm,” how he was worried he’d have to go live with his cousins in Pittsburgh. I explained, as Aaron had no doubt already explained, that Sunset Park was high up, out of the reach of the water, and that, while his building or the school might lose power for a while, he had nothing to fear; he could rest assured his parents were prepared. But what if we run out of water to drink? he asked me. What if there are “water wars”? He’d clearly seen another special on the Discovery Channel.

Almost half of humanity will face water scarcity by 2030, but I assured him he had no reason to worry, and tried to refocus his attention on the high production value of our own study of extinction.

from 10:04

Reagan may have been right about one thing. Where we’re going, we may not need roads.