Inconclusive

The past, be it near or far, isn’t the relative distance between an event experienced and our perception of that experience. It’s just as present in our lives as a book in the other room. The only difference between the past and a book in the other room is that the past remains inaccessible, behind a curtain; or petrified, like stone.

Distance is more like the past than the past is – real distance, or that which takes place elsewhere concurrently, is more inaccessible than the past, because one must rely on imagination (rather than memory) to transport us there. To instantly find oneself anywhere other than where one could reasonably be found in a matter of moments (say one thousand miles away) and hear its sounds, however mundane (children calling to each other outdoors; a dog barking; a refrigerator chugging to a halt), would be to experience the divine.

The divine isn’t another country where drifters aspire to travel one day; the divine is only that which exists on the opposite side of possibility.