key word: testament, title: now you know in misc. flash fiction

You can always go back there, you know. To the place and time it feels like it all went wrong or, anyway, where it feels like it could’ve all gone right but didn’t. That moment you’ve dwelt upon for months years lifetimes, you can always go back. You know which one I’m talking about, the instant to which all pasts led and from which all futures grow, everybody has at least one. Yeah, that one. The one you’re thinking about now. You can always go there.

You’ve been back there, you know, hundreds of times already, you just don’t remember. That’s your brain protecting you, forgetting how many times you’ve seen it all over again, so you don’t go crazy, don’t go crazier, anyhow. You go back and relive it then your entire life back up to the moment here you hear or read these words. A hell of a thing, this human mind, powerful enough to unmoor and go back to any point in a life. Any point, sure, but usually just that one.

You can go back there in an instant, but you can’t do the same going forward again. You cannot blink back into the now, you’re stuck taking the return journey the slow way, re-doing it all, joy by joy, horror by horror, tedium by tedium, back to this time again. You can’t change anything, of course, auto-pilot all the way, an amber of Einsteinian physics all the way until now again.

Time knocked an arrow called Entropy, you know, pulled a cord and launched it the moment the lights came on. You get to ride Entropy’s arc for a little while and it’s a blessing to get to, but the price is there aren’t do-overs. It’s a testament to universal elegance how the fundamental laws of conservation and causality block paradox, you can relive every second but for creation to remain consistent, you never get backsies. You can check out any time you like but there’s just one way to leave, when Entropy finally calls your marker in.

That’s what deja-vus are, you know, the times you lapped yourself so often, you’ve beaten a skip into reality itself. It can’t change anything, of course, at best it leaves a pop you may briefly note then return to your groove-rut you’ve already carved into face of God Itself.

That’s what dreams are, you know, years of unwanted reruns between the moment you’d change and now, your mind recoils and you see it sideways, a can of celluloid cut into individual frames and dropped onto your head instead of projected in sequential order. Your dreams are just those jumbled repeats seen as through a mirror dimly.

You can always go home again, you know, but when you get there, you’ll be stuck as who you were before you left, and you’ll still become this you anyway, the long way around. So maybe it’s best to just stop looking back and get on with it instead, you know?