.

“Not enough time for that!” he said, and cut off. How like me, to close on a double meaning.

“Write elegies for those not born!” he said. “I have to go. This is expensive, and I am not as well-off as you're hoping.”

I will remain an obtuse bastard. “What should I do with this information?”

Myself ran a wire back through gelatinous time, 40 years hence, and said to me: “I remember you. And the years are like octaves, scales descending the keyboard. I am here at the lowest end, the speed of oscillation slowing, and I reach in the past to find the fourth, the fifth, every decade the octave. Harmonies doubling the power - that is the secret of growing old, that you can play your past and present like a piano. Most people don't.”

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About the author: I've been running this website from 1997. For a living I write stories and essays, program computers, edit things, and help people launch online publications. (LinkedIn). I wrote a novel. I was an editor at Harper's Magazine for five years; then I was a Contributing Editor; now I am a free agent. I was also on NPR's All Things Considered for a while. I still write for The Morning News, and some other places.

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@20, by Paul Ford. Not any kind of eulogy, thanks. And no header image, either. (October 15)

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