OBSERVATION VII · HISTORY

Name your great-grandmother.

Take your time.

She had a name. A laugh. A favorite season.

If you cannot, you are normal.

Family memory holds about three generations.

Then the dark.

She worried about money.

She had opinions about her neighbors.

She was as real as you are right now.

To her, you are the unimaginable future.

She could not picture your face either.

Someone will stand exactly where you stand.

To them, today is ancient history.

Your family's memory holds about 100 years.

Your species has walked for 3,000 times that.

Almost all of it is dark.

You are the future person

who cannot name you.

THE RECEIPT

300,000

The age in years of the oldest known Homo sapiens fossils.

JEBEL IRHOUD, MOROCCO · NATURE · 2017

Everything around you feels permanent. It is only slower than you.

Today will become history while you stand in it.

OBSERVATION VII · WATCHED

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