Getting all existential and junk.

It's settled, we're going to see PJ and John Parish!

Humphrey's by the Bay, i know nothing about, but it won't even matter because i will be in the same room with a woman who is practically my idol, if i even have such a thing. The talent will ooze. i can't wait :) i feel very fortunate to be able to attend, even as i am bristling inside because i can't travel to Geneva with Nat this summer. Switzerland is somewhere i have always wanted to go, but it's just not in the cards this time. By "in the cards" i mean something much more like "in the bank account".

In other news, our 9th anniversary is coming up! Feels like it was just yesterday... not sure what (if anything) we should do, especially considering that the 10th will probably feel more like a big one, and we should definitely do something wild. i do have some tentative Super Special Secret Plans for this year, actually, but since Nat reads this blog sometimes (hi!), i have to keep mum for now.

Wow, could this post be any more boring for you all? Let's see what i can do.

Cigarettes are creeping back in to our diet. This is not good. :/

i want to take a photography class.

i recently got back in touch with my old best friend from childhood, and i could not be happier. The floodgates have opened, the memories are a torrent. Let's just hope i can close it back up again before i get washed away.

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The other night i was bicycling home and suddenly had a 3-second epiphany. i was listening to a track i'd downloaded onto my iPod (an original song from a now-cancelled TV series, Life On Mars), which is interspersed with some dialogue from the show. At one point a character says: we live, we die; nobody knows why.

And that's when i suddenly tripped out. As i explained it to Nat: it was like a simultaneous expansion and implosion of my brain, my knowledge, my perception, everything. Kind of like, all of the cells in my body took a collective deep breath and almost... jumped. Like that feeling you get right before you dive into a body of water. A sort of "oh boy, here we go!" type of sensation. A massive sucking, channeling feeling. Meanwhile my feet kept pedaling, my arms steered me true, but i wasn't really there. My eyeballs stared at the streetlights, the rows of cars parked on the side of the road, the silhouettes of eucalyptus trees against the blocky edifice of a nearby middle school. And i just... lost it, for a second. It dawned on me that things really were incredibly strange, and just how in the hell did the human race get to this point? When does "advancement" cease to be actual advancement? Why do things come and then go? And why do some things stay? Everything is echoes.

and then snap, i was back in my form, standing up to pedal furiously through the yellow light at the intersection to make it home.


So then Nat and i were talking last night about memory, and spacetime, and the old 'Why We Are Here'. i tend to think about memory as a sort of archaeology of one's life. i feel it is essential to be able to celebrate the past and remember what it felt like to be you, at any and all possible times that you were you. Because we change a little every day (even despite that some of us never really change, in a sense), and our sense of self is constantly meandering.. swelling and imploding. We are ourselves, but we are always someone new, having new thoughts and feelings and observations, at every next moment. This reminds me of my favorite "philosopher's quote", from Heraclitus, who said that you cannot step into the same river twice. For some reason i love that. It is perfect for life, the universe, and everything. For instance, you can stop at the same coffee cart on your way to work each day, and be helped by the same old man, but just as much as everything is the same, everything is also different. The sun is in a different position in the sky. The cars passing by are not the same (and if they are, they might be in a different lane, etc.), the carton of milk you pour into your coffee is different, (or if it's the same one, then the measurement of milk itself is not the same milk as you used the day before), the sounds are different, the clothing you (and others) are wearing is different, your body is one day different, etc.
i guess what i am saying is, you have the ability to make your life (your memory!) what you want it to be. While you wait for your coffee, you could look up. Check out the clouds, or the tops of the buildings. You could look down, count how many wads of gum are on the small piece of sidewalk you are standing on. You could look across the street. You could ask the name of the guy who is parceling out your beverage. You could even chose this particular morning to skip the coffee cart, and try someplace new. Or maybe you bring your own cup of joe this time, so you wave to the coffee cart guy as you pass and maybe catch the florist down the street opening up the doors to their shop, which is usually through by the time you get there. i'm definitely rambling now, but the possibilities are endless. You just have to take them and run with them. A new perspective is almost always good.

Is the past real? Is the future real? The past is as real as you are.

As long as i am here, for example, living this life, then the line of "what has happened to me" streams out behind me, like a wake. Angles of light falling on someone's face, the temperature of a snowbank, the smell of frying potatoes one particular morning, the sound of Nat tuning his violin, that time i broke my elbow. These "snapshots" contained within will always be "true", and "real", for as long as i am here to remember them. Once i am gone, that wake will diminish to a size consisting solely of other people's versions of those same memories (people who were there with me when they happened, e.g.). And when they, too, are gone, it continues to diminish. But when i keep thinking about it, following it to its end, there must be enough connections between people that these things never truly end or cease to exist. That they all morph and homogenize into a collective human experience consisting of truth, faith, suffering, elation, anger, wonderment, and letting go. Because eventually that's what we all have to do.

Fake Philosophy 101 is now over. Class dismissed.