Tomorrows, Yesterdays and Todays

For a long time, Booker could not remember the word yesterday, and so always used tomorrow instead, whether he was speaking of the recent future or the recent past. Confusion was compounded by his inability to distinguish the day after today from the day after tomorrow, or five days after tomorrow, for that matter. In addition to using tomorrow for mundane questions of schedule—tomorrow I go to school, I went swimming tomorrow—it was thus his wont to use it for grander and less precise hopes and memories—as in, the sun will come out tomorrow, betcher bottom dollar that tomorrow, there’ll be sun. But also as in, tomorrow, love was such an easy game to play. There were, after all, many tomorrows for him, and few yesterdays.

This has now changed. On Friday, looking forward to the weekend, he said, “Yesterday I have capoeira.” Then he caught himself and said, laughing, “I spent so much time trying to remember yesterday I remembered it too much!” Suddenly, he has a past that weighs on his future, like his elders.

The photo shows Booker and Seamus on a recent tomorrow, running madly through the sunbeams that filter into Copley Lounge. Seamus remains caught in the undefined glowing present of the age of unreason, just beyond the reach of time and memory. Booker has now seen his shadow and crossed over.