Time present and time past

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future
And time future contained in time past.

The Boy wrote a couple of weeks ago about what happens behind the scenes when seven shows share one stage over eight weeks.  Some weeks they have have one show or two shows running and one or two more in final rehearsals, and need to be able to change up the sets in under 12 hours.  Whew.

The time-lapse is of an entire season (in fact the first one The Boy spent at Summer Stage). I've tried over and over to catch the few frames in which that show is rehearsing or running, but can never quite manage to stop it at the right spot.  I catch one glimpse of lights in the upper left, where the show's narrator stood, but the images and the time slip through my fingers like silk.

The Boy leaves for his California College in less than three weeks.  Today he asked me to look for a photo from a show he did in 7th grade.  I swept through photos on my computer, watching him race his hamster in a ball to putting on a tux to sing in his first high school concert to grinning as he sits with his brother on the 4th of July in DC.  I try to freeze the frames, remembering when he had to stretch to reach the mixer and how he calmly climbed up the Beehive trail in Acadia National Park.  I see all 70-plus inches of him stride down the aisle of the local Presbyterian Church to sing his solo in Carmina Burana.  The frames move so fast, my eyes blur.  And I can hold on to none of it.

But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.