Tomorrow Never Happens

We've come to the turn of the year. This is the last day of 2012, a day so far in the future that I still can't comprehend that it's over with. I'm continually astonished by the juxtaposition of the date on the calendar and the view out my window. For anyone born before the middle of the 20th century, the 21st was a land of promised wonders. But the world outside my window remains essentially the same. People, plants and weather. I can't help but think it's not that different from the world the Babylonians saw. They saw more animals, perhaps, less tech. I'm not saying nothing's changed. I'm just wondering when, where, how? Has tomorrow ever actually arrived?

I read somewhere that the lines in Shakespeare's MacBeth, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, should be read as if tomorrow were unendurable, an endless tedium of days, the hopelessness of unchanging years.

Generations upon generations of Jews recited the mantra next year in Jerusalem, in which tomorrow is the place of hope. Next year. Next year. Next year things will be different. Things will be better.

Well, tomorrow is next year. It's a blip in manmade time. The planet has already made its move and could care less that we pay attention to this particular revolution. But we pay attention anyway. Time is another one of those cultural constructs. Like god. Neither of them seem to exist in any concrete way, but with the existence of which we nevertheless contend. Oh, there is time all right. A second ago my fingers were poised above the keyboard and now they are typing and when I am done they will do something else. Something in the future. Maybe pick up a piece of cold pizza. Maybe not.

The Steve Miller Band told us that time keeps on slipping into the future. The Beatles insisted that tomorrow never knows.

None of us knows where tomorrow is. Even Emily Dickinson wondered where the place called morning lies.

Janis Joplin famously insisted that

If you got it today you don't want it tomorrow, man, 'cause you don't need it, 'cause as a matter of fact, as we discovered in the train, tomorrow never happens, man. It's all the same fucking day, man.

Today is when I'm living. In a way, I'm living the same day that a Babylonian woman lived. Maybe right now, or a few moments ago, she is having a little bite of pidè. I call it pizza, and I think I'll join her.