Time Keeps On...Slipping

Memorial Day Weekend Memories

Over the past week, my brain, calendar, and watch have not been on speaking terms.

They've been giving each other side-eye while I stumble through my days, half a beat behind. I’m not late-late… just late enough to bug myself and anyone on the receiving end of my time fumbles.

It's not even fashionable lateness. It’s the kind of late that feels like I’m chasing a train that left the station a minute ago—I can still see it, but I’m not on it. And it’s moving fast. Without me.

I keep thinking of the classic Steve Miller Band lyric from “Fly Like An Eagle”:
“Time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’ into the future.”
Yeah. That. Feeling.

I want to fly like an eagle. Glide into a groove. Soar through projects, social stuff, and self-care without crash-landing into the couch with a face full of snacks and self-recrimination. But lately, it’s more like I flap awkwardly, stall midair, and spiral into yet another “What day is it again?” moment.

Case in point: I just realized yesterday that this weekend is Memorial Day Weekend. Despite being invited to a friend’s birthday/Memorial Day pool party tomorrow, the unofficial start of summer didn’t fully register. It’s like my brain opened the invite, read the words, and filed it away under "That’s a future problem. Or a typo."

Well, future me is here, squinting at the clock like it owes me an explanation.

Memorial Day Weekend has always been this strange, transitional blip on the calendar. Not quite summer, but summer-adjacent. A long weekend meant for reflection, for honoring lives lost in service, for remembering...and also for burgers, swim trunks, and letting go of schedules. It’s a strange mix of celebration and solemnity—a combo I always feel a little off about.

Maybe that’s why my brain delays fully syncing with the moment. It’s not just about logistics. It’s emotional. Time expands and contracts around memories—of people, of places, of versions of ourselves we’ve shed or long to be again.

I remember past Memorial Day weekends—some spent road-tripping, others soaked in sun and chlorine. Sometimes I was with people I love, sometimes I was very much alone. Sometimes I felt the weight of the world. Sometimes I just felt bloated from too many burgers and too much potato salad.

This year, I feel out of rhythm. But maybe that’s okay. Maybe time is meant to slip a little, especially around holidays that ask us to both look back and look forward. To honor and to play. To feel and to float.

So yes, I’ll show up to the party tomorrow. Probably five to seven minutes late. But I’ll be there, a little off-kilter, but present. Maybe that’s the real win. Not mastering time, but making peace with how flexible and strange it can be.

Because I suspect time will keep on slipping, especially as I get older. But if I’m lucky, I’ll catch a few fun moments in the sun before my brain, calendar, and watch confuse and distract me again.

Fly like an eagle, crew…tick tock, tick tock!
Clint 🌈✌️

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ON THIS DAY = MAY 24

BIRTHDAYS

• 1819 = Queen Victoria = British royal

• 1899 = Henri Michaux = Belgian-French poet and painter

• 1905 = George Nakashima = American woodworker and architect

• 1907 = Yoshiko Kawashima = Japanese princess and spy 🌈

• 1914 = Lilli Palmer = German-American actor

• 1938 = Tommy Chong = Canadian-American actor and filmmaker

• 1941 = Bob Dylan = American singer-songwriter and Nobel Prize laureate

• 1944 = Patti LaBelle = American singer-songwriter and actor

• 1945 = Priscilla Presley = American actor and businesswoman

• 1949 = Jim Broadbent = English actor

• 1949 = Roger Deakins = English cinematographer

• 1953 = Alfred Molina = English actor

• 1955 = Rosanne Cash = American singer-songwriter

• 1960 = Kristin Scott Thomas = English actor

• 1962 = Gene Anthony Ray = American actor, dancer, and choreographer 🌈

• 1963v Michael Chabon = American writer

• 1965 = John C. Reilly = American actor

• 1967 = Heavy D = Jamaican-American rapper, producer, and actor

• 1972 = Greg Berlanti = American tv writer, producer, and director 🌈

• 1975 = Will Sasso = Canadian actor and comedian

• 1986 = Mark Ballas = American singer-songwriter, guitarist, dancer, and actor

• 1989 = G-Eazy = American rapper

EVENTS

• 1844 = Samuel Morse sends a message from a committee room in the US Capitol to his assistant, Alfred Vail, in Baltimore, Maryland, to inaugurate a commercial telegraph line between Baltimore and Washington D.C.

• 1883 = The Brooklyn Bridge in NYC opens to traffic after 14 years of construction.

• 1919 = The first gay feature film, Ander Als die Andern/Different from the Others, is screened for members of the press at the Apollo Theater in Berlin.

• 1940 = Igor Sikorsky performs the first successful single-rotor helicopter flight.

• 1956 = The first Eurovision Song Contest is held in Lugano, Switzerland.

• 1958 = United Press International is formed through a merger of the United Press and the International News Service.

• 1963 = United States Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy met with African American author James Baldwin in an attempt to improve race relations.

• 1967 = Belle de Jour, directed by Luis Buñuel, is released.

• 1976 = Tales of the City column by Armistead Maupin (born May 13, 1944) first appears in the San Francisco Chronicle.

• 1991 = A View to a Kill is released in theaters.

• 1988 = Section 28 of the United Kingdom's Local Government Act 1988, a controversial amendment stating that a local authority cannot intentionally promote homosexuality, is enacted. (Fuck Margaret Thatcher!)

• 1991 = Thelma & Louise is released in theaters.

• 1993 = Roberta Achtenberg becomes Assistant Secretary of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). She is the first openly lesbian or gay public official in the US whose appointment to a federal position was confirmed by the Senate.

HOLIDAYS + OBSERVANCES

• Aviation Maintenance Technician Day

• Brother’s Day

• National Scavenger Hunt Day

• Pansexual and Panromantic Awareness and Visibility Day

PORTRAIT + VIDEO OF THE DAY

ANTHONY GENE RAY = REMEMBER HIS NAME…FAME!

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