Time Marches

Today, I discovered that Dolly Parton has a Twitter and Youtube account thanks to a retweet from Jason S.  So, of course I had to check it out.  I have a sometimes obsession with Dolly Parton.  I like 9 to 5: The Musical and Steel Magnolias.  I like the fact that she built Dollywood in her home area.  Plus, anyone who made a career somewhat off of their breasts and is completely upfront about that is totally okay in my books.

I was looking at her Youtube page and she has a video blog.  I watched the latest entry, and it was pretty standard fare.  Her being Southern and wishing everyone a happy 4th of July and telling everyone that they can change the world and that 2010 is now officially halfway over.  See, but what struck me about this article is that Dolly Parton looked old.

Not bad, mind you, but older.  I always get struck by that when I see people that I don't get to see very often.  I imagine that people, when I don't see them, pause.  They're waiting for me to get back for their lives to continue.  They don't age.  Things don't break down.  Everything is going to be okay and the same when I come back.

This is obviously not true.  Things change.  Entropy reigns.  And as Tom Disch reminds us, "Things break down in different ways/We can't for that omit their praise."

I don't feel myself growing up or getting earlier.  I think that I'm the same that I always have been, but I guess that I have grown up.  Somehow, I became what I never thought I'd live long enough to be:  an adult.  And I'm having an adult life and adult problems.  And things don't stop.  The march of progress marches relentlessly forward.

And I like the hum of moving forward.  But sometimes I want to grab at the images flashing by outside the window.  And I can't.  Because time marches on, and it truly is, as Tennessee Williams says, "the greatest distance between two points."

There's always tomorrow, but it never looked the same as the incomparable today or yesterday.  It's a copy of a copy:  similar but never the same.