The Past is a swimming pool in Malibu, California. It is steadily, infinitely expanding.

I’m floating in the middle, on an inner tube, wrestling with a perplexing sense of melancholy- like that one scene in The Graduate.

As my tube bobs up and down in the crystal-clear water, a wave laps against it at just the right angle and gently splashes my chest. I peer over my sunglasses.

The edge of the pool is far away now. That’s peculiar? I didn’t notice it was growing.

I can just make out the glint of the ladder on the horizon. Yikes. better start swimming…

It takes me a good twenty minutes to make it back to the edge. I grip the cold ladder: skin on metal, metal on skin, slick, squeaking

and haul myself, panting and dripping, onto the patio.

Ouch, I’m burnt. Got out just in time.

As I’m catching my breath, I survey my surroundings:

Hmm. Somebody’s backyard. But I don’t recognize it.

Better move quickly… I don’t wanna risk getting caught. I wrap a pink candy-striped towel around my waist and march barefoot into the grass. I jump the back fence, and shoulder my way through a hedgerow.

Inside the hedge, dainty twig fingers prick my bare arms. The sensation is odd. It’s uncomfortable, but also nostalgic. I’m transported back to Montgomery, Alabama, ca. 2008- on a bench somewhere on Crescent Lake, on a buggy Montgomery afternoon. In boyhood, injuries were only skin-deep, and everything was fleshy. Nothing was cerebral. Problems were bee stings, catfish bites, and baseballs intentionally thrown at shins. Solutions included, but were not limited to- popsicles, water balloons… touching Avery Herr’s skirt on the school bus… feeling her thigh brush against yours…

These days, javascript and hexadecimal codes dictate my mood. Water balloons are generally frowned upon. Stakes are contrived; the safety net is wide, and regardless, I don’t climb on anything I’m not supposed to.

Deep in the bushes now- a heath border between this world and the next, twenty five miles deep. Endless, scratching, tickling, sneeze-inducing sensations. I’m reminded of summer camp slip-n-slides: climbing off the tarp at the bottom of the hill, my freckled boyhood skin coated in itchy grass clippings and soap scum. The freckles were more visible back then. At age eight, there was a much starker contrast between my milky base complexion and its blemishes. It was the beginning of an illicit nubile affair between a boy and a billion year old sun. Twelve years later I would go to Cuba, and on a rooftop in Viñales, in the land of alternative futures and proactive futility, God taught me how to tan properly.

But anyway,

I stumble out of the hedgerow and snap back to reality. Or at least, back to the first abstraction.

I look from side to side-

I’m standing in a grassy easement between two backyards. The California sun beats down on my exposed shoulders. Trees and exotic topiaries block my view of the horizon in all directions.

Where am I?

“Don’t use the GPS” I tell myself. I toss my phone into a flower bed. These days, whenever I open Google Maps, I end up scrolling across the globe back to Home. I’ll waste hours on Street View in small towns, reminiscing,

“Remember spilling Zaxby’s sauce on the driveway of the Frank Lloyd Wright house in Muscle Shoals? Remember when a stray kitten got into our fried green tomatoes at the farmers’ market in Orrville?”

If I was going to dwell on the past, I might as well get back in the swimming pool.

I’m still dripping.

I briefly consider my options, then turn, and continue walking along the easement to my right. Pushing through another set of hedgerows, I emerge abruptly onto the shoulder of a road.

It’s really hot now. I can feel the pitch-black pavement blistering my bare feet. Tiny grains of asphalt work their way into the crevices of my toes and under my toenails. I wish I’d put on shoes when I got out of the water.

I cross the road and gaze down the hillside to get my bearings. In the valley, the city sprawls out before me, a mosaic of stucco and concrete shimmering in the midday heat. It seems to stare up at me expectantly, waiting with bated breath- like the crowd at a circus, transfixed by a trapeze artist. The background morphs to black. Three trumpets trill shrilly. Drumroll. A blinding spotlight *clicks* on, posterizing my silhouette against the void. I look down, only to find my feet glued to the pedals of a unicycle. Welcome to the Rocky Horror Tightrope Show. I feel a hot bubble of anxiety rising in my chest. My vision starts to swim. I close my eyes and shiver as a wave of nausea ripples through my body… Just breathe…

I open my eyes again. It's quiet. A faint breeze blows in from the sea. Los Angeles is still.

Through a kaleidoscope I see ants down below, climbing in and out of their cars, chatting outside of Pilates studios, drinking iced matcha lattes, exchanging needles and business cards.

They haven’t noticed me. I can’t believe I never noticed that before.

I reflect on the task ahead in the days,

months,

years to come,

but only for a moment.

It’s too hot to stand in one place.

I turn resolutely and begin to walk down the road,

the pink candy-striped towel still tucked in at my waist.

A trail of drips follows me over the hill and out of sight:

plip

plip.