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Record



A well-meaning new year’s resolution to

be more present begets new tasks.

We got so good at layering the day-to-day

with an oozy, amber slideshow of memories that

the film melted and became indecipherable.

Upon peeling apart,

we find three types of present.

  1. Apriori, factual setting and circumstances, as though seen from an aerial view or described in third person. This one’s kind of basic, the descriptions in a screenplay to set the stage. “12 noon, campus setting, classes let out for lunch, students emptying onto the green.”

  2. Minutiae, the moment to moment routines, the idiosyncratic patterns and obstacles. Now we get into first person mode. “I’m hungry and craving an everything bagel from the food truck in the green. I’ll use the walk to call my friend whom I know is also at lunch right now.”

  3. Other worlds and other moments projected upon this world and this moment. It happens more than you’d think. For instance, realizing during my walk that I avoid a section on campus, and not so much because it’s near the building where suicides occurred–it IS a different building, a block down–but because it’s where I once started to talk light-heartedly over the phone with my friend, eager to hear her and energized from my bagel, curious how her own work with students was going. And for each of us being positive Pollyanas, typically upbeat and egging each other on, we found ourselves mutually shook and grim, her speaking about the active shooter that week at her nearby university and I the complicated history of suicides in this nearby campus hall. How far down in our bones must the grief sit? How many multitudes can a place contain before it swells and snaps under stress? She hung up to pick her kid up from daycare, I retreated back to work with my bagel, and the students, fed and caffeinated, went back to class.

    © Colleen Maynard 2011-2026