*****
it has been a long month or so. school (elementary school) has started up again. the acupuncture school finished, and then (yesterday) started up again. and we went over to california for a week to drop off my daughter to berkeley. (oh yeah, and during that week, i got to meet and briefly hang out with a couple of old friends, one from college, and one from high school).
the thought i've had (and still have) is that life is short. i've said it before, and you've heard it so many times that it loses its meaning. but i'm here to tell you, from this side of life, that it's true...
*****
there's an episode within cowboy bebop (this now old anime show from the later 1990s, i think from 1996)... one character, faye valentine, had suffered amnesia after some sort of cryogenic sleep... her character post cryo developed into this wry, self-sufficient gambler type... but she could not remember her life from before... anyway, in this one episode, she and her friends discover an old vhs tape that her previous self had recorded, as a message to herself... i guess it's been done before, like in that arnold schwarzenegger movie (total recall)... but this was much better, and far more poignant... because in the video, faye is a teenager, with all the innocence and hopes and dreams of someone on "that side of life," who wants to give a message to "cheer herself on." she comes up with a cheer (and performs it with pom poms), and the message is "don't lose, me!!!" but when she says it, it keeps coming out as "DON'T LOSE ME!!!" ... which is sad, because that innocent hopeful self is gone and forgotten, a part of herself that she can no longer remember...
i sometimes feel that way. i mean, i can remember the past, but only in traces and shadows... sometimes i think the "meat" of the past, the thing that gives it the most content, is probably the most insubstantial part of it, the part that has proven itself to be unreal... the hopes you felt, for instance. the air of possibility... i can sometimes feel it, or sometimes relate... sometimes... but only from the outside. and maybe it's because i've seen a bit on the other side of life, how so many things never came to fruition, despite my cherished belief that they would... i've seen other kinds of happiness, other kinds of fulfillment... and developed other hopes... but sometimes it feels like, in the process of living, we are always leaving behind other pieces of ourselves, other "faye valentines"... and sometimes that is sad.
i also have been reflecting on who we live for. sometimes you don't even realize that you were living for someone else, trying to earn someone else's respect, until they disappear, or die. my grandmother, for instance... i guess, secretly, i had wanted to write stories to earn her respect... maybe a lot of people. my parents, etc. but as i get older, and as the stars slowly wink out from my constellation, i realize... maybe there's no one left that i care to impress... no one connected directly with me, i mean... and i start to think, what's the point? i mean, i portray it as a negative thing, but it's also liberating... i also have realized that this compulsion to write, or tell stories, even if it's futile... by a certain point in life, you have to try, because it's the river you're on, and you can't fight it. maybe all the vicissitudes of life are just realizing that you can't fight what you already are. you can only pretend, or distract, but it will always come back to you, pushing you, wounding you, killing you, even...
i am tired. i am sad. but somehow i take joy in the little things, day to day. i like to talk to people. i like to laugh with my students sometimes (even as they frustrate me)... i like to look at my wife when she doesn't think i am looking. and make my face look weird or stupid (it's not hard). i like to talk to my son, in that way where you are trying to be casual and not too judgmental... all of these things, all of these people, i love... because i know what time and memory will do to them... right now, i love them in a gentle sad way. i think that's the one gift i have right now, is a kind of appreciation of people and things in my life- because it all goes away. even (or especially) because i will have to, i am always, going away...
life is short.
life is short.
life is-
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