As Time Goes By

AS TIME GOES BYNearing the end, Old asks himself, "Does my life ultimately have any importance in any universal scheme? Am I just taking up space? Have I wasted the time given me? What effect have I had on others? Have I unknowingly, worse, knowingly, hurt others in some fashion? What''s my worth? These are playful existential questions with no pertinent answers for me. So I''m putting down my cane and picking up my pen. I''m going to sift through the sands of my time to see what I can discover through remembrance. Don''t expect any fancy writing. No playing with altered punctuation, or trying to be aesthetically clever, or poetic, or intellectual. Not here a Sedaris, or Saunders, or Atwood, or Yuknavich. Just me, squinting into some memorable windows in my life before they all fog."W. Royce Adams'' fictional works include The Rairarubia Tales, The Computer''s Nerd, Me & Jay, Jay, and Against the Current, a collection of short stories. He lives in Santa Barbara, California. www.wroyceadams.com