The Tyranny of the Present

I walked along the LA River this morning, the sky still a tad overcast and the air cool. The cacti looked like surfboards lined up against a rusty chain-link fence. I passed ducks basking on concrete, green poking up through stone, the water shining and moving past the banks. A smiling cyclist flew past me, and when I crossed the bridge in the middle and walked back on the other side, I heard the rush of cars on the freeway just through the fence, silver glinting through green. Plastic bags were caught in the branches, cups and trash littered the bushes, yet there was beauty in all of it -- this pulsing river, the lizard that skittered over my foot, a tit pulling at a patch of clover, a hawk circling overhead. I was thinking about happiness, and I was thinking about sorrow. I was mulling the tyranny of the present moment. Once we entertain that present, allow it the head place at the table, there seems to be no going back despite the body's urge for the past and the heart's hope for the future.