Past Tense, Future Tense

I've checked almost everything off my To Do list; I've purchased things I need (a bag as a carry-on and for school, a camera) and things I want (heeled oxfords, swoon!); I'm doing laundry tonight and packing tomorrow, after a haircut. It's really happening.

With this trip coming fast, and my boyfriend graduating this semester, and my obsession with Victorian England, Time and Change are two Big Concepts that have been popping up a lot. My current read The Sherlockian by Graham Moore--which is a great book and I highly recommend it--has further fueled my churning brain regarding those Big Concepts.

The chapter I just read sees Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Bram Stoker discussing Oscar Wilde's death late in 1900. Those who know me will know the cast of characters alone holds a special appeal, and their topic of conversation--the end of one era and the beginning of another--is one I find particularly compelling right now.

My world is tilting on its axis. A silly phrase, to be sure, since that is what the world always does and always has done and always will do, but to quote from the very first Doctor Who episode I saw, "It's like when you're a kid, the first time they tell you that the world is turning and you just can't quite believe it 'cause everything looks like it's standing still." It's that moment of awareness. I am becoming so very aware of the possibilities, of the "palpability of history." (pg 281 in The Sherlockian) This trip will become old, faded pages in my journal, hazy memories, something for the scrapbook to show my future progeny and hopefully instill the same curiosity and thread of wanderlust in them. But for now, it is real, palpable, my present and future life. What is future soon enough becomes past.

And now that I'm done with my overdramatic ramblings, I have a skype date with Danes, who is already at school. (Danes is codename for my boyfriend; I'd explain it but, unfortunately, the explanation itself will tell you exactly what his name is. It's so entertaining I just couldn't resist, even though it's a bad codename.)