ex tempore

The past is a foreign country; its armies are massing on the border. The future is staging a strategic withdrawal, leaving little forage behind. In between, we get by moment to moment, occupying a thin slice of territory at once coveted and forsaken. Trapped in a never-ending now, we evade for a time the inexorable advance of what was and, so long as we can, follow an ever-receding what will be, gleaning what we may from what is. And though we try to steer to where we might find some respite, more often than not we are simply carried by the current.