Hopscotch

or, What Was and What Is

I'm sitting in my parents' house and it's Christmas Day, or really, it's Christmas night: it's Christmas night and I haven't left the house all day, haven't showered, haven't even put on shoes. I ate and drank and gave some presents and opened some presents and then I ate some more and drank some more. I fetched a book from the shelf full of books I keep in their basement, a stash of favorite books that still I leave behind; I pick one off the shelf that's been on my mind lately, a book I love and a book I tell people I love though it's hard to read and though I don't remember very much from it; and I plan to read it again, though one way or another it won't change my opinion of it; only my memory of it.

[So I wonder if, more generally, my opinion of things is fixed while my memory of them is fluid. I think that probably is the case.]

I read the first paragraph of the book. (I read this paragraph every time I visit my parents.) It's an excellent first paragraph and it does nothing but confirm my opinion of the book. "Would I ever find La Maga?", it begins. It's a short first sentence but it's a long first paragraph; the first page only has two paragraphs, and the second page only has two; and that's the average for the book. It's slow going. When I think of this book, I think it's the kind of book I'd like to write, though I don't remember what happens in it and though it's kind of boring; and I think of it as a book that I'd never be able to write, partly because its paragraphs tend to be so long: I'd lose track of it, like I sometimes lose track of myself.

"Would I ever find La Maga?," I wonder to myself.

I don't think I probably will.

I'm looking at the photos on the wall of years past, other Christmases: the people are the same but in the photos we look like children. We were children; and we're not anymore; and the heaviness now in our eyes is the difference between what is and what was, the difference between what we wanted to be and what we are, the distance between walking a line and hopping scotch, spot to spot to spot, one step forward, left, right, a game you play with chalk and your own two feet, till the rain comes and washes the sidewalk clean...