Today, you are a member of… The Long and Winding Road
Marshall McLuhan once said, “we drive into the future only using our rear view mirror.” As clever as such a visualization is, it’s not exactly correct, members. We do go forward navigating by way of a back-facing mirror into the past but the trouble is, we live in a wormholed world, where the road we’re on doesn’t behave so linearly. People and events we feel certain we blew by miles (or decades) ago somehow reappear or, at least, feel to be right there tailgating as we hurdle into the unknown. Consider all the president’s men. As part of Gerald Ford’s post-Watergate “Halloween Massacre” and George W. Bush’s dubious right-wing realignment/Iraq crusade, Rumsfeld was Secretary of Defense both from 1975-1977 and from 2001–2006. Though now (hopefully) a shrinking figure in the nation’s future rearview mirror, there’s no telling when or where he’ll show up again. And truth is, we all have spectres like Rumsfeld–bits of past that somehow keep floating out of our future into our present. All you can do is unleash the Hemi under the hood on the open road and be vigilantly aware: objects may look closer than they appear.