Driving past the ex-girl…ummm it’s more of an ex-relationship because of the insane complication…house tonight on the way to a movie meeting. Feeling that feeling of loss of a grand part of your life, missing the cats too. Driving past a place that almost hired you, then fired you that day, then called up again a few weeks later. A little drunk on wine, having been plotting the remains of a movie for the past few hours, and suddenly experiencing the amazing wonder of the consciousness of the road not taken, the path not walked.
Every so often in my life I find utter and complete amazement at the path my life has taken. Just when I’m sure one thing is going to happen it seems something unexpected zooms in to wiggle its hips hat me and say hello.
Driving to Martin’s, to get some of the best Mexican food I’ve ever had, tonight I was overwhelmed by the past and the present. What would I be doing if that love slaughtered in the darkness hadn’t been slaughtered at all? What would I be, where would I be if all those tacit decisions taken in the distant past had been different. Would I still be who I am? Is there an being outside of the influences of events or is there only the reaction to events that builds up a personae?
It is amazing and pedestrian. Nothing special in these questions but I’m overwhelmed by them now, missing those bits and and pieces of my soul that never quite connected that drifted away that I never knew that never saw that never cared that wanted too much and so on the way that happens when people pass through each other. Missing the purr of a cat and the smell of a woman and amazed too that such things can surface in moments when they hadn’t been there in months.
Who are we? what are we? These are the questions that never seem to leave me.
Am I that moment in 2nd grade? Am I that embarrassing moment in high school? Am I cowardly moment…well most of my life? Am I the think I pretend to be? Am I the outdoor active lifestyle seeker I like to think I am? Am I a computer guy? A writer? A movie maker? A social pariah? A cook of great prowess? A bicycler of limited prowess? What does it mean to be you anyway?
Damn, my memory and the easy path to a meeting.
Sweet Melancholy. We all deserve it sometime.
The swirling-memories of past-choices and their repercussions/effects on the present can easily overwhelm anyone when times are fuzzy…. but I’ve also found those pains can be processed to your benefit, if only in using them to resolve to not let the present become another one of those memories for your future. That squishy past can be harnessed as a springboard, even though it often seems like a swamp… you are not just the collection of past experiences… you are the processor/determiner of how those experiences affect your future.
Most of the parks in my hometown are quite large, forested, and have a plethora of paths that meander to and fro, sometimes connecting and sometimes going in completely random directions. No single trail by itself constitutes the entirety of the park, which is much more comsiderable as a whole. Neither does any one particular experience constitute the whole of a person. Some trails are better than others, but they all belong. So too, are experiences.
So what am I getting at with this faux-zen analogy? What I’m trying to tell you, is that you should go to the park and take some of your favorite Mexican food with you.
/ unhelpfull, I know