Sim Carter: Past Tense Imperfect

The past is just another word for something I ’ ve left behind, and while it ’ s filled with omissions—like the Instagram I meant to post yesterday—mistakes and missed connections, it ’ s also filled with an ever expanding array of amazing memories. So many memories we file away in our personal storage systems. Memories that fill up your headspace until that warning beep, better dump that stuff in the trash or archive that old data, transfer it to the iCloud where it can float freely, the barest whisp of a thought, until you decide to access it again. That ’ s how the days pass, we live in the now, or we try to, but the past is always there, getting larger and larger. It ’ s not all good. Some of that past should stay locked in that ancient old-timey journal you secretly keep hidden under last winter ’ s sweaters, to be taken out only on rare occasions, when the house is empty and no one ’ s around to see you looking at it. Unless you ’ re some weird inhuman humanoid you ’ v...

This story begins in the bedroom I shared with my sister in the apartment we lived in with our parents  on Twelfth Street in Santa Monica. It's  #13 of my   " On the Street where I Live Stories ."  Yep, I've got many miles to go.    Miss Mouse Goes to Work  I woke to the ringing of a far off phone; I knew without opening my eyes that the light beyond my bedroom window was still grey, the sky and the sidewalk matching shades of slate. Too early to even think about waking up. I burrowed deep into my pillow, desperate to stay in that sweet half-sleep state when the morning can be anything you want it to be. I’d stay in bed until about ten, then, like most days that summer, I planned on hitting the beach with my best friend.  It wasn’t just the ringing phone barging in uninvited from the living room of our apartment or the daylight’s insistence on pushing past the window, my mother’s voice was breaking through too, the musical ton...

Alzheimer’s being the conniving thieving bitch that  it is, my mother wasn’t herself in the final years of her life. The  woman I visited in the Alzheimer’s special care unit was a stranger wearing my mother’s skin but not much else, like the invasion of the body snatchers had taken place, month after month beneath the surface, until one day we looked and the woman we knew was gone, replaced by some alien being. An imposter. Intruder alert. Intruder alert. She died on Friday the 13th in 2012. My real mother —not the stranger in a wheel chair, head nodding on her shoulder—Enid Maude Good nee Hayden,  was British-born and had a lovely London lilt to her voice her whole life even though she left England in the mid-1950’s. I suppose at thirty, her vocal patterns were already frozen in place.  Sounding like a cross between Deborah Kerr and Judi Dench, there was something warm and welcoming, layered with a cool crispness, in her voice....

I realized that my plan to take you along day-by-day as I virtually retraced last year’s 90 day trip of a lifetime, had a fatal flaw. The last thing you need is me, slipping into your email, day after day after ninety days. You wouldn’t care & I’d be creating a mountain of work for myself.  So, I’m just going to change my plans and just not do it. Saving this space for the occasional piece of writing. My most recent writing post is Diamond Girl, a short story my brother says is one of the best things I’ve ever written. Which must guarantee it’s a fabulous piece of writing, right? No bias, at all! You can find the piece right here:  https://www.simcarter.com/2022/06/diamond-girl.html  Or ya know, just use the search bar   If you’re interested in my daily posts, you can follow me on Instagram. Find me at SimCarterWriter.  If you’re not, well, there you go! Please send me virtual hugs for keeping your email inbox a tiny bit more clutter-free. You’re welcome ...