Today is a Tuesday.
The picture is from a walk last night.
This moment in time: sitting on the couch, wearing my favorite purple sweater, with my cat Atticus lying near me on the ground, floofy back towards me, floofy white inside his ears just *so.* I hear a bird outside cawing. The sun is kind of pointing downward at the trees, not straight down but.. like the 6 o’clock long hand on a clock.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about life in general. Someone I dated for a while in college recently died. He was only 41. We’d reconnected in recent years as friends, just a bit. It’s so weird, you know… life? Like. There are people and our lives intersect, and then we live independent lives, and then our lives might cross again. I realize that there is nothing particularly unusual or profound about this semi-obvious thought.. it’s just that.. isn’t it amazing ? Isn’t it amazing? I think it’s amazing.
It’s amazing because we’re simultaneously so independent and interconnected. It’s a both-and kind of thing. That we exist within our brains, at some level, but that there is a difference between yawning by yourself and catching a yawn that has spread across a room.
Anyway. I’m remembering Chase. He affected my life a lot. I really can’t believe he’s gone.
People always say things like “live life like you’re dying” or whatever. “Live in the moment” because you don’t know what will happen.
I can’t believe he’s gone. My piano teacher died a few years ago, too. I can’t believe she’s gone, either.
I still have voicemails saved on my phone from a lot of people who are no longer here.
I feel mad about the things that steal life from people- things like perfectionism and anxiety. Religious legalism. I’m always mad when someone loses something, but seeing that life is finite makes me feel even more passionate about that.
I feel like I’m in that middle range of “still young enough to feel like I can pretend I’m younger than I am but old enough to know the truth” when I see wrinkles in the mirror or what not. When my physical abilities aren’t what they used to be. Maybe I’ll look back on this post someday and think, “wow, she was so young, what an infant.” If I’m lucky enough to live long enough to look back on this post and think that, I’m pretty sure I will think that.
What strikes me right now that is that life is happening now. Right now. In elementary school and high school, you’re “getting ready for life.” But life is happening then, too.
I have spent time reading the well-meaning extremists- Dave Ramsey, Marie Kondo- who have beliefs about when one’s life will *really start.* I’m not knocking them, I just know this way of thinking- that once you do X, your life will start. Once you’re out of debt, once your home is in order, etc.
Once you’re out of school. Once you get married, or have kids (some people feel those pressures). Once you have a certain amount of possessions. Idk there’s always something people are chasing. People use that kind of carrot/stick approach to motivate people, whether it’s religion, motivating kids to work hard at school, motivating people to buy in mentally to a certain kind of ideology or thinking, or motivating people to be extreme in their willingness to suffer in a certain way, in hopes that it will lead to some big payoff someday. “In the future” when their “real life” begins.
There will never come a time when there isn’t another thing on the list of things to do before one’s life begins. At least, that’s how it seems, if one continues to look for things to add to the list. And dealing with health issues is a very big part of life that people don’t usually think about when they’re healthy.
There was a post I saw on Twitter today that had some really good quotes that people were writing on it. It made me think of a song lyric from a movie I’ve never watched. The movie is called “Tango Feroz.” My high school AP Spanish teacher told me to bring him back that soundtrack when I went to Argentina as a foreign exchange student the next year, and I brought back 2 cds- one for him, and one for me. It’s an amazing soundtrack. Anyway the song that came to mind was “Presente.”
"¿cuánta verdad hay en vivir solamente en el moment en que estás? sí el presente- en el presente y nada más?" https://t.co/S4unsDamsa
— catharine aint 'fraid of no ghost (@coffeecatharine) September 10, 2024
I made a typo in the tweet. It’s “momento.”
Anyway the meaning is “How much truth is there in it to live only in the moment you’re in? Yes, the present- the present and nothing more?” That part is at like 2:00.
If you know something about Argentine history.. there’s been a whole lot of violence against the youth in years past. More than I can write about here really. But, anyway. I know the movie has some stuff about it in its story. I should watch the movie. We should watch the movie.
I think that’s all I wanted to say.
