'A Rearward Reward' by the Egg Party.

From the year 2005. This is a further exploration on time travel. I guess this isn't a break month. 
Onwards and rearwards.

​- The Egg Party

---

A Rearward Reward
​

by the Egg Party


I found a diary on the street. After returning from the future, the year 2560 in Bangkok, to Berlin in 2017, I was scattered. I was existing as a couple of different versions of myself. I was in a medium depression. My energy for activities requiring focus, such writing, was at a low. 
I instead worked at my editing of a longer piece. I wrote a lot of this while in Thailand and it makes sense because the piece is set in the far future. I wrote the end chapters there. Now that I am back in the present I analyse how I look to the future. 
Then I had the opportunity to go further back in time with the diary. The diary was from the year 2005. 

In the end it was back to the future, to go back to the present, to go back to the past to look at the future, in order to go back to the present, to finish the story about the future. My delorean was a new diary. 88 WPM.

I was asked last week what was my purpose for writing was. It took me some time to answer but I came to the conclusion that I write to improve my self-worth. Which is setting myself up to fail. When I am low and I wallow in self-pity I automatically fail again through my writing. 
I was also having trouble talking about writing at the time. I think it is because my writing also highlights my failure at speaking German. I write English over learning German. I put so much of myself into writing. Into what could turn out to be a useless endeavour. It needs to be good enough that it can satisfy me.
Satisfy me when I say that I have not been learning German because I have been wallowing in English. 
It doesn't.
Anyway.
​I had patience with my low mood and waited out the depression, accepting the cyclic nature of the condition. In the end it changed and as I write this I am a bit feeling better about life.
A new diary assisted in this process. Leaving organisation to natural inclinations was failing and it provided a boost. 
Today is Mittwoch.

My diary week starts on a Tuesday and it is surprising how influential that small difference is. I have crossed out each day and rewritten it. Each day has a stroke through it and is replaced with the German equivalent. I read the German name each day, choking on the pronunciation.  

This is the first story I have written entirely on Choke and Stroke. The websites word editor sucks. 

As I said, the diary is from 2005. I found it on the street a few weeks ago and it is a testament to unlimited human potential for hoarding. 
In the year 2005 I was 18 years old.
I was working two jobs, one paid and one volunteered. I worked at a funeral home on the weekends. During the week I studied science and volunteered at the Herbarium.
I think of this year as I sit on my roof. Through the broken window of my room I can access the utility stairs sporadically placed on the slanted tiles. Living in the attic has advantages. I think you should have knowledge of your roof and your basement for any place you live in. Call it a superstition. 
My only other superstition is that you should not buy your own ashtray. 
The terracotta of the roof is home to various lichen and moss growths. I look at the moss and think of the moment of inspiration which created Grug. I feel shared inspiration.
But the lichen interests me more. 
When I volunteered at the Herbarium I was in charge of collating, ordering and mounting the Lichen collection. I find this alien organism admirable. It possesses a natural resilience which I have yet to achieve. Flourishing on my roof are examples of this. 
The Herbarium was an old place hidden in the folds of the University of Melbourne. The volunteers were responsible for fighting off the inevitable irrelevancy of the facility. There was another Herbarium in Melbourne housed at the Botanical Gardens and that received almost all of the time and attention from the state. Rightly so. The place is beautiful. No one else was interested in the small collection of dry old herbs at our university. Maybe other herbs.
Coincidentally I was wearing a lot of corduroy at the time. In particularly a pair of brown flared trousers which seemed appropriate for first year university.
I don't think it was a conscious action to emulate the beatnik scholars of the past. Moreso it was because corduroy pants were my version of track pants. I have never owned a pair of track pants in my life and I was envious of their soft nature. I could not wear them due to childhood condition. Dress code for my family house was, 'no sweatpants, no flip-flops, mate.'
Well as Karl Lagerfeld puts it,

“Sweatpants are a sign of defeat. You lost control of your life so you bought some sweatpants.”

I need as much control over my life as I can possible get.
2005 was the year of the Great Herbarium Flood. Builders above the herb vaults had removed the insulation that was in between the floors while overhauling the whole building for essential repairs. The construction work coincided with a huge downpour and the rain breached the structure.
I was the first to arrive at the Herbarium after my class and the roof was leaking over the compactors. My reaction was ordinary. My eye for disaster was poor. I had a distracted streak that carried on past childhood. I am better now but remnants linger. 
I looked at the water and remembered the emergency first aid acronym but forgot the D. (D)RABCD.
Rabcd.
Rabid. 
I was better at seeing disaster by reading human faces than by observing my environment.
I could look at a rabid dog charging toward me, all foam and madness, and immediately think how it would be to have foam dripping from my mouth at all times. So many tissues. Who can afford that? I could never just leave something on my mouth like that. But then who can live with food at the corners of their month? I certainly cannot have a conversation with them. 
I was gettin distracted so I walked inside the place and sat at my small desk for a moment, thinking about the appropriate response to emergency. That was the only system I remembered. Could I give the herbs first aid?
I did not want to rush into a decision so I started to prepare that day's cataloguing. I took out some of the lichen before realising that that the excess water would hamper my ability to do the job. I went to investigate. The head of the building, Prof. Graham Hurt, was asleep in his office, a human coffee stain  in a beat-up chair. On waking him he began to despair due to the extra work that was now in his lap.
 
'This is the greatest calamity in the history of the Herbarium!' he said. 

His solution was to go upstairs and explode at the construction workers. Righteous Scientific Indignation. I stayed downstairs putting vessels under drips.
In my time working there afterward I saw the place decline further. it never recovered. I have not been back in years to see how it is. All I know is that it only exists in the past.
That was some of 2005. I think everyone has strange time when 18. Even if you are inactive you are mentally turbulent. 
I have come back from the future to a past that is new.
I could go back to the future of 2560 but it is not so easy. I would have to convert to the tenants of the Theravada Buddhism. 
I could go back to the past and do 2005 differently. I can do a better job on the Lichen. 
I could remain in the present and just do my job. 
It is through editing my older writing that has caused me to think about travelling in time again, finding the errors in my hastily constructed stories. Maybe Alvin Toffler was right and it is future shock which is the cause of my maladies.
From 2560 all the way back to 2005. That is not to say that I am dissatisfied with 2017. I like being in the present. It is as close to the future as I can get. 
​Will people be as nostalgic of the noughties as they have been with the previous decades? I suppose so.

This story has no point. 
The person who had the diary before me had big goals. Those goals existed between January 22 and May 12. Then they left the diary on a shelf for twelve years. 
All the notes are birthdays. Except for one. The most interesting goal in their life that existed in 2005, that I could use for repurposing was:

That's all. They were aiming to be the best. The best there ever was. I can be inspired by that.

'Every challenge along the way
With courage I will face
I will battle every day
To claim my rightful place.'

lyrics by Aguirre Gamboa, Trans. Adolfo, Tamara Loeffler, John Siegler.
​