I uprooted my entire life in the States to go find the London of Dickens. I wanted to live in the bustling 19th century neighborhood of Camden Town where merchants sold everything from sweet lavender to containers of chicken broth, right there on the streets. I wanted to meet the likes of Bob Cratchit and Mr. Fezziwig. I just figured that London would be frozen in time, and exist in the way the Charles Dickens had portrayed it (for better or for worse). Was I surprised when all I found was a normal city with cars honking, people rushing around, tourists gawking, and no tomfoolery afoot whatsoever. But then I saw him. I could swear I saw him. It was Tiny Tim, singing on the corner for money!

I watched from a distance. I watched him for a good long while. When it started to get dark, he collected his hat with the coins and cash that the passers by had offered, and he limped off with his crutch. I followed, of course. He turned the corner into an alley with no name, but it was filled with a haze of chimney smoke and a flickering glow from gas lanterns lining the street ahead. As soon as I turned into the alley to follow I could smell a foul stench. It was a mixture of burning oil and urine. When I got to the street with the lanterns, I could here shouts of people and the moans of beggars sitting on the cold cobblestone. The hum of electricity was gone, replaced by an eerie echo of voices that bounced off of the bricks buildings.

I was immediately accosted by a group of young boys. Tripped and pushed to the ground, every pocket rummaged, and a blunt blow to my head.

“Welcome to Camden Town, gov’na.” It was the last thing I heard before blacking out, and the last thing I saw was the mangy looking creature that hissed those words into my ear.

I woke up in a cold sweat in seat 28F.

“Ladies and Gentlemen. We’ve started our decent into London and the captain has turned on the fasten seatbelt sign. The flight attendants will be around to collect any rubbage.”

I wasn’t sure if this was my version of being visited by three ghosts or if it was just a bad dream. Regardless, my stay in London was brief and limited to the confines of Heathrow airport. I had a change in plans. Maybe a trip to Steinbeck’s Monterey would be a little less stressful. Yes, cannery row might be just what I needed. I rubbed the welt on my head and headed to the reservation desk.

The bookcases were anything but immaculate. The books weren’t arranged by author, title, shape, or size. An overflow of novels, biographies, poems, and dictionaries of all sorts were stacked face-up on the edges of each shelve. They were even piled onto side tables, displacing the lamps that hadn’t worked in weeks. Even the tops of the bookcases had stacks of books gathering dust. Despite the literary chaos, it was his favorite spot in the world. The chaos of the world outside was too much to bear.

The other buildings had been bombed out or sabotaged, but not this one. It was left alone. A safe haven that no bullet could touch. An unspoken truce kept the walls of this collection intact.

Milo was of ‘fighting age’ in the eyes of both friend and foe. His very presence threatened the reading room. As the fighting grew more desperate, the sanctuary of the building faded. The rules of war became non-existent as the days turned into weeks, and the weeks into months. Milo would read night and day, taking himself away to far off places, meeting new people of all sorts. He’d be dining at a cafe in Paris on minute, while walking on the sands of Mars the next. But the real world around him was collapsing and smoldering.

The room would shake and shudder with every bomb that hit the city. Dust and debris would fall like snow onto the pages of Milo’s book. He’d brush and blow off the rubble and adjust his headlamp. A brief coughing spell now and then to clear his lungs.

The fighting grew closer. Shrapnel hit the the building, sounding like a handful of rocks thrown at the wall. Milo noticed one book in particular on a nearby shelf. It had no dust on its spine and grew more distinct with each explosion. The sound of bullets and bombs became unbearable, the air was heavy. The novel began to emit a light that Milo couldn’t ignore. A round hit the building just as Milo pulled the book down and opened its pages.

The cacophony of flying debris had stopped and was replaced by the sound of hooves and carriage wheels on cobblestone streets. Milo sat at a table with a white cloth draped over the top. He sipped his tea while turning the pages. He dared not close the book.

The wind blew something in that morning. It was a sense of purpose, I believe. But believing had become something that people didn’t do anymore. So I’ll just declare it: It was a sense of purpose that blew in with the wind.

I laid in bed for just a few minutes, but then swung my legs out from under the covers and onto the floor. It was still dark outside but with a glow from distant porch lights that were absorbed by the low clouds and reflected by the blowing snow. I made my way down to the coffee pot with the cat leading the way down the stairs. He was expecting his morning treats and a stroke of this head. He knew something was afoot, and had a hop to his step.

We walked around the house, the cat and I, and started working. But it wasn’t truly working. I tightened a screw here, hammered in a loose nail there. I picked up dirty clothes from the floor of the laundry room and placed them into the hamper. I scraped off some dirty plates and put them in the washer. I wiped off countertops and swept the floors. I hung up coats and hats that had been draped over chairs.

Once my physical space was tidied, I worked on my mind. I put away loose thoughts and swept away the remnants of the past month. I reorganized my priorities and put them in order. I wiped away apprehension from my workbench and finished up some ideas I had thought about in the Fall. I decluttered all the nooks and crannies of my mind, especially all the places where I had shoved the thoughts of undesirable, yet necessary tasks required of life.

The alarm went off and I hit snooze again, slowly realizing that it was all just a dream. I hadn’t organized the house. I hadn’t decluttered my thoughts. The wind was howling outside, but no purpose had blown in, only tumbleweeds of doubt and hesitation. It was such a sweet dream, though. How hard could it be to do it all again?

I swung my legs out from under the covers and stood up. The cat lead me down the stairs for his morning treats and a pat on the head. I began again, clearing the countertops and loading the dishwasher; picking up clothes and organizing my thoughts. I moved with a purpose, just like in my dream. The alarm went off and I hit the snooze button one last time.

The sun didn’t rise that morning, it just jumped up into position, and then it plopped down below the horizon, then up again. It shot back and forth like a pinball. Nothing was moving the right way that day. The stars were jittering in the sky, darting from one horizon to the next. The oceans rose up in great pillars, then fell down again. Birds stayed on the ground but the deer took flight. Trees grew sideways, clouds formed into balls and rolled across the sky. Avalanches careened uphill and crested the peaks. The street moved under my feet like a treadmill, taking the scenery with it. And then, in an instant, it all went back to normal.

Not even the greatest scientists could explain it. Philosophers drove themselves insane with their ideas. Religions recruited in masse and scooped in truckloads of cash. Governments became paranoid and built more walls. Millions stopped drinking and millions more hit the bottle. It was not a time for the strong-willed and stable mind, but belonged for those who had always lived in a world that was a bit shaky. It was just another wrinkle to them.

It had happened before, tens of thousands of years ago. It was sketched out on rock walls, in symbols and pictures. Petroglyphs captured the scene perfectly for those who had lived through it. Life went on for them, but not for the newest generation. Too many humans on Earth with too many conspiracies. The agony of the unknown drove societies into chaos. It was a virus of paranoia, anger, jealousy, and distrust.

On a quiet plateau at the edge of the Sahara, sketches were being carved into the face of the cliffs. They would be forgotten again for tens of millennia. The unknown became the undoing of modern society. It was a society living on the edge, and that strange day when the sun jumped up and then down, was enough to push it over the edge.

Peace comes to me in the evening. The harsh sunlight, while comfortable, is not comforting. With twilight comes the silhouette of the mountains against the western sky. Light blue fades to cobalt and the planets wink into sight. The brisk air refreshes my body and clears my mind, bringing in the scent of wood stoves and frosted pine needles. My soul settles in and I can reflect on my life; making plans for the future that would otherwise dissipate in the light of day. I’m in control of my destiny for those brief hours between dusk and daylight. I’m at ease with who I am, and who I will be. Nightfall shelters my dreams and strengthens my spirit, bracing me against the battering waves that will come with the dawn.

Every December I look over the graveyard of last year’s resolutions. It’s strewn with the headstones of good deeds gone awry. A resolution to volunteer at the soup kitchen turned into an effort to learn how to make soup for myself. A resolution to go outside for fresh air led to more time indoors, googling places to hike. A resolution to watch less TV, turned into day-long binges of Netflix on the computer. Finally, I resolved to give that man on the the corner a dollar or two, but at the moment of truth remembered that I needed that money to buy ingredients for soup. The headstones of Resolution Cemetery are monuments to my selfishness and confirmation of my weakness.

This year I’ll be more careful, making resolutions that I can’t twist and morph into something detestable. Maybe I’ll resolve to walk past the gym on my way to the bar, and think to myself, “Good for them, getting in shape on a Monday afternoon. I’m proud of those strangers!” Or maybe I’ll stand in front of the low-fat selection of ice cream at the grocery store and resolve never to but that stuff, ever. Yes, I think this time next year there’ll be fewer gravestones in the resolution cemetery to mock my efforts. It’s going to be a great year!

Such hubris! To live under the illusion that we know what tomorrow will bring. Making plans and preparing for a future that is as mythical and imaginary as the streets of Atlantis. We model in our minds what tomorrow may entail, we make our best guess based on what happened yesterday and the day before that, but it’s only a guess.

Some spend days, weeks, a lifetime planning meticulously for a future that cannot be known. A job interview, a career move, a first date; they all are planned with the assumption that human behavior is a constant, like gravity or the speed of light. They all are planned with the assumption that yesterday is an accurate template for tomorrow. They all are planned with a dose of naivety and a splash of ignorance. “The best laid plans of mice and men…”

If we hold our breath, if we don’t make any sudden movements, then life tomorrow may be a replica of today. But an errant step to the left or to the right, forward or backward, and tomorrow is nothing like we expected. If tomorrow was known, then he wouldn’t have gotten on that plane, and she wouldn’t have gone to school that day. If tomorrow was known, then he would be excited to wake up and start his day; after all, the sooner he could bump into her while fumbling for his keys, the sooner they could start their lives together.

Everything that happens in the next moment, in the next hour, day, or year, is the greatest unknown. Our plans are arrogant because we assume that tomorrow already exists, and that we control it. But tomorrow doesn’t exist, not yet. And when it does blink into existence in front of our very eyes, it’s not what we expected at all. We use words like fate, destiny, or luck to explain why our best laid plans were either destroyed or salvaged.

But there is liberation in the unknown. Our futures are not predetermined, no matter how much we plan for them. Go forward into the dawn of tomorrow without hesitation, knowing that yesterday is merely a ghost, and tomorrow is a figment of our imagination. The only reality, the only thing that is known for certain, is this moment. Embrace it!

The pouring rain was not welcome. I didn’t invite it. But it came for me anyway; the cold gloom mirrored my spirit. The rain ceased and the clouds parted ways, satisfied with what they had done. The sun descended out of sight, releasing a deluge of orange to fill the sky; a triumphant monument to hope. The crescent moon peers through the heavy haze; hinting that my spirit will rise again.

The life support system was only designed for eight years, but it had been twelve since the orb departed from the docking position. Something had gone terribly wrong five years ago, and Rem knew it. She had powered down every conceivable system to conserve energy. Every breath was a cloud of frozen steam that hung in front of her frosted eyelids. When the stale air burned her lungs she knew it was time to give the heat a short five second burst. She could only hope that someone or something would pluck her out of the painful darkness, but she only had days at most.

As she drifted through the nothingness, Rem began to remember things. Like that afternoon, fifteen years earlier; an otherwise forgettable day, except for that odd, yet delightful man. She remembered that the gaunt and awkward technician approached her in the reading room of the training center. He looked around the room sheepishly, until finding the courage to make eye contact with Rem, if only briefly. Looking at the ground mostly, but with a quick glance or two up at the ceiling, he spoke with an impossibly soft tone. Rem strained to hear him and leaned closer until she could make out his message.

“I convinced him…convinced him to do it.”

“Convinced who? To do what?” She asked in a calm and reassuring tone.

“The boss man…to put in the keyboard, of course.” He grew more comfortable and made more eye contact with Rem, shoving his hands into the pockets of his filthy gray jumpsuit. “I know how you like to write the old fashioned way…” His face became flush as he realized he had revealed too much about his admiration for the explorer. “And you can send messages out by just hitting the blue button…it probably won’t go nowhere, but at least it’ll feel like you’re writing to someone.”

She couldn’t help but smile. “Thank you…um…”

“Douglas.”

“Yes, of course, Douglas; thank you. I don’t know where I’d be without a good keyboard. It is a good keyboard, right?”

“Of course, of course…I picked it out myself. Every key works…the apostrophe sticks a bit…but it works if you tap it a few times…sorry.” He put his chin closer to his chest, ashamed.

“That’s no problem. Apostrophes are as obsolete as keyboards. Thank you for that.” She smiled broadly and made sure she met his eyes, with a slight bow while bending her neck. He felt the urge to smile, but could only manage a smirk that caused the side of his face to wrinkle, revealing his age and too many years of toil on the job. With a sharp nod, he quickly shuffled out of the room without a goodbye, remembering that he needed to be somewhere ten minutes ago.

Rem could barely manage a grin from her frozen mouth, but the memory of Douglas forced it. Her keyboard had died two years ago, but not before she could write hundreds of pages about her journey, hitting that blue button after every entry, yet knowing that the words wouldn’t reach anyone. She opened the ancient laptop one last time, typing on the keyboard without any words appearing on the screen. But suddenly, a sentence blinked into existence. Her fingers quickly, reflexively, sprung off of the keys, worried that she’d delete the words; words that weren’t hers.

“We’re on our way! My apostrophe works by the way…you see?”

“Douglas!” She gasped out in a gravely, half frozen voice. She never thought she’d be so happy to read the words from such an awkward little man. Gratitude wasn’t the right word to describe how she felt for being plucked from the void.

“A simple thank you is good enough.” Douglas said softly while squinting at the back wall. Rem grabbed him by the shoulders and gave him a hard kiss on each cheek. She reached back and picked up her keyboard from the table and shoved it into Douglas’ chest, holding back a smile, “Now fix the apostrophe and get it back to me on Thursday.”

“Thursday?…” He knew he could do it by Tuesday, but he hesitated, a little unsure about what to say.

“Yes, Thursday…Thanksgiving. Don’t bother bringing anything, other than the keyboard. The Company is providing everything!”

Douglas hadn’t been to a Thanksgiving since…well, he didn’t know when. Instead of shuffling out of the room, he nodded at Rem and walked with a bounce, thankful that he had a friend. Or maybe she was his boss, he wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. But he was happy for the first time in ages.

The steam from my coffee lets me know what kind of day I’ll have. A couple of swirling wafts to the right and it’ll be a day filled with mundane drudgery and vapid conversations. A serpentine pillar straight up, dissipating by the edge of the lamp, and I know my wit will be in full gear, drawing laughs and invitations to a happy hour that I never intend to attend. But a gathering of steam that remains at the base of the coffee, lingering like a mist, now that’s when I know the day will get interesting; like seeing Sasquatch ride by on a unicorn kind of interesting.

Today is different though. The rising column of steam reaches the rim of the cup and then is whisked away in every direction. What kind of twisted prognostication is this? I could see Elvis at the bus stop, only to have a disappointing conversation about his gospel years. Or maybe I’ll be the one to ride a unicorn into work this time. Only time will tell, but the distant sound of hooves on the street makes me optimistic.