These days, I’m caught somewhere between believing whether it’s today, tomorrow, or even yesterday.
And no — I haven’t gone crazy yet.

My high school, the one I graduated from in 2004, is closing down and moving to a new location. The old building will apparently be renovated into apartments. Strange how a place so foundational to hundreds of lives can suddenly become something entirely different.

Today I called the principal — who, years ago, was my business teacher. We spoke briefly about where life has carried us since those days. I honestly wish it weren’t for time and the busyness of life that we could have talked longer, but responsibilities pulled us both back: him to the business of running a school, and me back to a delayed stone carving project waiting in the studio.

The reason I called was because my parents recently walked through the school during one of the final open houses before it closes for good. They photographed four of my paintings that are still there.

Funny enough, they actually missed one.

Five pieces in total remain in that building.

One of them isn’t removable at all.

I couldn’t help but sit with the weight of that realization — that something I made as a teenager has remained anchored in that place for over twenty years. Long after classes ended, lockers changed hands, teachers retired, and entire generations passed through those halls, the work stayed.

There’s something deeply humbling about that.

My parents urged me to ask whether I could take the paintings back before they were discarded or forgotten during the transition. I was told they would otherwise be placed into storage, so I agreed to take them.

Oddly enough, part of me hesitated.

I don’t really have any practical use for them.

Truthfully, I don’t have much use for most of my work once it leaves my hands. Art is strange that way. It’s often made for a specific place, person, or moment in time. Once it resonates somewhere, it no longer fully belongs to the artist.

But these pieces felt different.

I realized I should honour that younger version of myself — the kid trying to leave some kind of impression on the world without fully understanding why he needed to. Those paintings became part of the memory of that school for students and teachers alike. I’m grateful they mattered enough not to be removed years ago.

And this entire experience has stirred something much deeper in me.

I keep thinking about a story I once heard involving a man who experienced a near-death incident. After being revived, he described sitting in a hospital room having clear conversations with family members as though everything were completely normal. He knew he had died. His family knew he had died. Yet the interaction unfolded as naturally as waking life itself.

That story has lingered with me for years.

Sometimes I wonder: what if we are already living across multiple layers of reality at once? What if memory, presence, and influence continue beyond the framework we call time? If someone were dead in one reality but alive in another, would anyone truly know the difference? We all continue participating in this shared consensus — contributing to places, people, and moments that collectively become “real.”

But what happens when the place disappears?

When a building changes, something strange happens to memory. The mind can still replay events, but the physical anchor is gone. Four incredibly important years of my life were rooted inside those walls. Once those walls are altered, revisiting those memories becomes harder somehow — like trying to hold smoke in your hands.

And yet, the memories remain alive internally.

When I sit quietly and allow myself to drift backward, I can still hear everything. I can still see the classrooms, the hallways, the art room. There’s more there than the physical structure ever contained.

I never fully understood the emotional weight of Neil Young’s song Helpless until now.

“There is a town in north Ontario,
With dream comfort memory to spare,
And in my mind I still need a place to go,
All my changes were there.”

Neil Young was referring to a northern Ontario town — likely Blind River, the same town where W.C. Eaket Secondary School still stands today. Those lyrics suddenly hit differently now.

“And in my mind I still need a place to go.”

That line almost brings tears to my eyes.

Because some places never really leave us. Even when the doors are chained shut. Even when the windows are replaced. Even when time moves on.

“All my changes were there.”

I think that’s what this reflection is really about.

Not death.

Not nostalgia.

But presence.

The realization that our influence continues through the impressions we leave behind — through art, memory, conversation, kindness, struggle, and creation. Whether time is past, present, or future may not matter nearly as much as we think it does. Perhaps those are only perspectives layered onto something much deeper.

We are.

And from time to time, in stillness, I can feel that.

So whether that old art room eventually becomes someone’s apartment or not, there will always be a version of it that remains untouched in memory.

There will always be Al Wright with music blasting through the room.

There will always be students covered in charcoal dust and clay.

There will always be that younger version of me discovering the path I’m still walking today.

Some places never stop existing.

They simply continue somewhere else.