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Two Lives in Three Times: Introduction
by Gwynne Watkins
At fifteen, we've already begun to define ourselves, with things that will seem so small and simple in retrospect. Here are two fifteen-year-olds: one, we'll call Scarborough Fair, the other, Easy Rider. Both have a young desire for old things. Scarborough Fair wants to compose herself from old notes, the texture of worn velvet, the smell of charcoal steaming off her sketchbook. She sees these as timeless, believes they will give her the strength to linger while others burn out around her. Easy Rider finds her strength in rebellions that already happened, in controversies she would like to re-ignite. She believes in old records rescued from thrift shops and dumpsters; she doubts a person can learn anything about the world just by looking around them, so she looks to the past, and to the open road.This is where they begin, Easy and Scarborough. They have other names, but they're not so important; they will always know each other as Easy Rider and Scarborough Fair, the odd teenagers who found one another and never quite let go. Even at that pivotal second after high school when they went their separate ways. Even now, seven years from that first trivial conversation.
At fifteen, at eighteen, at twenty-two. Three points chosen by tossing darts at their timeline. The same rituals, repeated over and over, captured in three moments. Scarborough and Easy don't realize they're repeating their own history; few of us ever do. But here is a meal, a song, a swim, each containing flashes of something before.
You and I are not so different from these girls, each morning awakening to a kaleidoscope of mornings past, the repeated moments laid out side by side, refracting the light by which we see ourselves. But instead of throwing your own darts, looking at yourself at three ages, you've decided to come here. So please, start with something simple. Follow Scarborough Fair at fifteen, to the moment when she first hears Easy Rider's voice. Start with a sandwich.