Sealed In Time
Sealed In Time: Past Stories That Made Our Future was written by the students of 826LA’s Write On! After School Program in Fall of 2024
Buried Treasure: Reflections on Time Preserved
On the sidewalk leading up to the entrance to 826LA in Mar Vista, the following words are barely visible, lightly scrawled in what looks like charcoal and unsigned:
“I lived here, I loved here, & one day I will be gone.”
Why do we do this? Why do some of us paint graffiti on the sides of trains that will travel thousands of miles to places we will never go, to be seen by eyes that we will never know?
We want the future to remember and understand us. That is why we create time capsules, the theme of the book you hold in your hand. When we create time capsules, we are trying to bottle some of the river of time that is always changing, and always changing us.
However, making time capsules is not about stopping or turning back the clock, any more than standing in a river stops its flow. Instead, they are the hands by which we measure the hours, the landmarks that let us know how far downstream we've traveled. Time capsules express our twin desires to be known, and to remember who we once were.
We live in the most well-documented time in human existence. We offer up large pieces of our lives on online platforms at ever increasing speeds, and yet we feel increasingly lonely and unseen. In these times of instantaneous digital expression, there is something thrilling in the delayed gratification and uncertainty of time capsules. When we create them, we do so with the knowledge that we might not be around to see them opened. We do not know who will open it, or how they will respond to the contents inside.
Time capsules are a mystery and an adventure. They can be a figurative or literal portal to another time. In this volume by the student authors from 826LA’s Write On! After School program, you will find all of that and more. In their stories, time capsules are found in or lead to haunted houses, underground kingdoms, and time machines stashed in janitors’ closets. Their characters find within them riches beyond their wildest dreams, the ashes of past tragedies, and varieties of cheese. Collectively, these stories capture our desire to discover our pasts, our futures, and of ourselves. And to make the connections between them.
This book was written in the midst of 826LA’s 20th anniversary. It is the latest addition to two decades of publications amplifying the stories students want to tell about themselves and their worlds. One can’t help but wonder: Twenty years further down the road, who will open it? What will they make of who we once were? Will there be that ache of recognition as when we look at a door frame, etched with lines and dates and height measurements?
Will they marvel at how small we once were? Or how tall we have become?
Mike Dunbar, Tuesday December 3, 2024