A city of the future built in the past

In the movie The Empire Strikes Back, the young Jedi Luke Skywalker is interrupted in his practice of the Force with a vision of his friends in trouble. Master Yoda looks into the future to see what the friends’ fates might be. “Difficult to say,” he finally mutters. “Always in motion is the future.”

For years and years — up until only a few years ago, actually — I always thought this line was “Always emotion is the future.”

I much prefer this reading of the line. “Always emotion is the future” has a kind of frission for me; as cryptic as it sounds, it makes more sense. [And apparently "frission" isn't a word, so I'll use it here and define it later -- something along the lines of frisson from fiction, with an infusion of truth.]

The future has always been emotional for me, in regard to reading and writing science fiction. Writing this account of the excavation of Heliopoli has been emotional, and oddly enough has been increasingly so. This is a roundabout way, however, of saying I think it has run its course, one that has lasted two years. I thought at the beginning that I would do it for only two years anyway, and doubted I would last that long. So, it’s time for the excavators to pack up. There is one more post that can wrap things up, but it needs to wait; and I’ll either post it in the new place or let the city have one last secret.

I’ll continue to post on my personal website, which has had blogging capability for several months now, and I recently found myself sweeping out and refurbishing the place to make room for something new. My attention on the Internet seems to have split in all directions and it makes me want to pull back (and there’s not much sense in having more than one blog anyway). I’ll keep this site up and use it to comment elsewhere and, who knows, maybe the excavators will return to dig some more one day.

I doubt I’ll be able to let the city go very easily, but it’s hard to predict such things.

After all, always emotion is the future.