2005-03-25

The turning of wheels

This was originally written on the 23rd of March:

Today I turn 19. There are 18 years behind me of small loops which I call large, meaningful events.

Today I mumble and curse at being so old, and I'll wish I could go back to being 17 or 16...because 18 came by so quickly I barely had time to recover from 17. When it came time to enjoy the age, the other came and took it away, leaving small remnants.

18 was like the arranged husband. It was there--it was supposed to be there--but I never truly loved it--not as much as 17.

19 is more attractive, but far too old for my taste. And they all still say: don't worry, you're young....

I'm young now, but next year I'll be 20. I don't like 20

The world is small---life is small. My forest looks the same each year, and always, I will recall how hours passed with neck and head arched up toward the sky, barely visible then, covered by the mattress of trees. Back then, it was infinite. I lived in my Walden.

We are creatures made of dust: of memories and old dreams and dried sighs and tears now gone stale with time's passage. We remain as dust, blinded by old songs and broken thoughts. I am locked up in the one and only body that I have to help me survive this life...and I age, yet, I cannot see it.

In my thoughts, time no longer exists, and there is absolute darkness while my essence sits under the banyan tree. Today, I'm 19 and tomorrow I'll be 45--it truly makes no difference. It is now that I become dreadfully aware of my own mortality--I won't live forever. The years have slipped by--without caution nor warning--like invisible grains of sand. Never truly can we touch them--o no...yet, we feel their presence...and their absence.

I knew I was aging the day I went sailing late at dusk with my parents. I looked out into the ocean with silent sailboats away beyond me. My lament that day was that I was 14 and enjoyed it--an age I did not want to give up.

Don't open your hand or it'll slip away?

aeka at 9:06 a.m.