...but itʻs 3 am again (or maybe more precisely, itʻs 4:20).
i recall, when the kids were 10 years younger or so, that i would wake up and haunt the halls of the house. i would go into the kidsʻ rooms and whisper, "i love you," like some kind of ghost (i would do the same to my wife, sleeping in her dreams). i canʻt remember what would disturb me. there is always always always something in life to be anxious about... money matters. the trajectory of your children. health issues... always there is, and always there will be...
there is always also a perpetual sense of regret, and it is something that doesnʻt necessarily grow, but it just seems more prevalent, more ever present. iʻve come to the conclusion that itʻs largely ridiculous to feel too much regret, or rather, that it is an inevitable part of life to feel regret. life is all about choices- choices that are made or not, or rather, choices that weʻre aware of or not. i think to breathe is a choice. even to dream in the depths of sleep is a choice. and weʻre constantly making them. weʻre largely blind to them, we canʻt help but be, but we still make them. and each choice wends a path through this woods, through this rapids, and even if we lay ariadneʻs web behind us, we will never be able to remake the choice, to redo it, to go back. and thereʻs inevitable regret in that, this idea that things could have been different. and perhaps they could have, but thereʻs no use in bemoaning that, because itʻs gone... and anyway, we have so much right here, so many other choices to make, so busy-busy-busy making choices...
what i want to say is this: life is incredibly incredibly short. i know we always hear that, we always perhaps say it ourselves. but it is. you think youʻre one thing, and youʻre so busy taking care of becoming that one thing, and then before you know it, youʻre something else. the world has changed. people are gone. people have grown. and the towers you thought you were building for one moment- for example, that swing set and that backyard play area you were working so hard to cultivate- why, the children are too old, and they donʻt want to play there any more... all these investments you make turn out to be irrelevant to the ever changing present...
i think my writing is a stubborn dream. and i hold to it. it may be irrelevant... but i think itʻs not so much about producing anything that would be read or celebrated by anyone else. itʻs more about me attempting to bind back my life, and find a meaning in it that perhaps only i would appreciate...
*****
among my insights (lately)... i keep associating my brother with the first chinese brother, the one who swallowed the sea. and i have a story for that association, about how he swallowed so much water teaching himself how to swim- and perhaps tears- that he essentially swallowed a sea. and how he might say that it was all for the sake of others- like myself- that he did this. when actually, it was always for himself... i also have ideas about this idea of trajectories. one of deanʻs friends is a literal rocket scientist, and i wanted to have this notion that, because of his friendship, my brother gave this friend the confident to have faith in trajectories, and to become a rocket scientist... but in the process, i wanted to say that he stole away my sisterʻs trajectory (in the story, she is the dragon princess, which is actually a carp that wants to jump a waterfall to become a dragon... only, she canʻt). the message is, yes, my brother has contributed to the world- the larger world- but it has come at a cost in terms of what he has taken away from my family... something no one ever talks about...
i also wanted to make mention of urashima taroʻs treasure box, somehow. this thing that holds time. "time in a bottle" essentially... and why anyone would want to hold back time?
*****
wherever and whoever you are, try your best, live your life, fulfill all your nagging obligations... just do your best to do what is right... because truly truly truly: life is short. life is so incredibly short.
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