So...
I have been given a little time this evening. The girls are asleep right now, Liz in our room, Cheal in hers. I've spent the day in seclusion for the most part. Both at work because it is a Friday, and here at home by choice. Some people have given me some wonderful gifts for my birthday and although I have lived over a quarter of a century I am probably more confused than ever.
The only certainties in life are fleeting... As I sit and consider what has happened over the last few years I realize that I have become my own man. I am proud of parts, horrified by others, and bemused by still others. So many days now though, I find my mind drifting back to when I was a child. The games I used to play, the quiet evenings spent with friends playing in the backyard. People I cared about now lost unto the ever rushing river of time. Today, it hit me out of the blue when I was in the car, what a few lines from System of a Down's "Aerials" actually mean...
"Life is a waterfall
We're one in the river,
and one again after the fall"
We all are one in the river that flows, and then we are born, seperate like drops in midair for only a short time until it all comes crashing back together. A beautiful analogy... One I did not really grasp as fully as I should have. Maybe, it is the dwelling on my mortality that has made all of this so hard. Maybe, it is because for the first time in my life, I really do have something to lose. The irony, is that in losing so much, I have so much to gain as well. If my illness drains me of all my fiscal wealth, it may show me a greater wealth that I have only seen glimpses of within myself. A wealth that passes "through the eye of a needle", much easier when your thin, guant, and pyhsically bereft... Perhaps when you must fight for your life, you will learn to love living.
I think of all the sunsets I have missed, all the blades of grass I forgot to count, all the morning glories that haven't bloomed yet... I think of a tiny apple tree, in the center of my father's house -- not my house, yet always mine, that has grown as tall as I. I dream of moments, lived, and relived. Of recent records broken, not out of breaking a record, but to break a tie to something -- someone... Shades, shadows, skeletons in the closet. It all hits me... with the force of a waterfall. We seem to wander in circles so much, actually lost in them. Get up, eat, go to work, come home, eat go to bed... sound familliar? How about love, lose, swear never to love, fall in love again... Ad nauseumn. It's the stories that keep us going though. The oddities, the adventures, the glistening glowing eyes in the heat of the moment with her curled near you suppresing screams in the night... Scars of pleasure, scars of pain... All these circles, and then little lines that break off tangent to them for those very special moments. The moments that make our stories and carry us through the winter, through the tedium, through the malcontent wretchedness of human mortality.
So now I face the hammer. I am at the beginning of the possible end. I have to have the courage to rend flesh and let them look beneath it. If there is a festering darkness of uncontrolled contagion within me... It is about to be brought to life. I once read that cancer was immortal. I have always wanted to be immortal for some reason... For some reason I am still niaeve enough to believe that given eternity I could put it all right. Maybe I could... the iteration of small enough changes can move bolders, rend apart rivers... Amazing the power within the atom... Rend the smallest particle and create an iteritve reaction that will tear apart everything in its path for a time... for a distance... for some space.
I get lost in the infinitely complex... Want to feel something creepy? Think of your brain... think of your brain thinking of a brain... now keep doing it... You, a finite being can hold an infinite number of constructions in your head. You can envision a physical infinity but cannot endure an infinite time. I often wonder if we will find the mobious loop between the very large, and the very small... Maybe there isn't one. Maybe the whole is contained in every particle of the part, maybe not. The finite composed of the infinite... Seems to make a nice explaination to why the anti-derivitive works so well...
The only certainties in life are fleeting... As I sit and consider what has happened over the last few years I realize that I have become my own man. I am proud of parts, horrified by others, and bemused by still others. So many days now though, I find my mind drifting back to when I was a child. The games I used to play, the quiet evenings spent with friends playing in the backyard. People I cared about now lost unto the ever rushing river of time. Today, it hit me out of the blue when I was in the car, what a few lines from System of a Down's "Aerials" actually mean...
"Life is a waterfall
We're one in the river,
and one again after the fall"
We all are one in the river that flows, and then we are born, seperate like drops in midair for only a short time until it all comes crashing back together. A beautiful analogy... One I did not really grasp as fully as I should have. Maybe, it is the dwelling on my mortality that has made all of this so hard. Maybe, it is because for the first time in my life, I really do have something to lose. The irony, is that in losing so much, I have so much to gain as well. If my illness drains me of all my fiscal wealth, it may show me a greater wealth that I have only seen glimpses of within myself. A wealth that passes "through the eye of a needle", much easier when your thin, guant, and pyhsically bereft... Perhaps when you must fight for your life, you will learn to love living.
I think of all the sunsets I have missed, all the blades of grass I forgot to count, all the morning glories that haven't bloomed yet... I think of a tiny apple tree, in the center of my father's house -- not my house, yet always mine, that has grown as tall as I. I dream of moments, lived, and relived. Of recent records broken, not out of breaking a record, but to break a tie to something -- someone... Shades, shadows, skeletons in the closet. It all hits me... with the force of a waterfall. We seem to wander in circles so much, actually lost in them. Get up, eat, go to work, come home, eat go to bed... sound familliar? How about love, lose, swear never to love, fall in love again... Ad nauseumn. It's the stories that keep us going though. The oddities, the adventures, the glistening glowing eyes in the heat of the moment with her curled near you suppresing screams in the night... Scars of pleasure, scars of pain... All these circles, and then little lines that break off tangent to them for those very special moments. The moments that make our stories and carry us through the winter, through the tedium, through the malcontent wretchedness of human mortality.
So now I face the hammer. I am at the beginning of the possible end. I have to have the courage to rend flesh and let them look beneath it. If there is a festering darkness of uncontrolled contagion within me... It is about to be brought to life. I once read that cancer was immortal. I have always wanted to be immortal for some reason... For some reason I am still niaeve enough to believe that given eternity I could put it all right. Maybe I could... the iteration of small enough changes can move bolders, rend apart rivers... Amazing the power within the atom... Rend the smallest particle and create an iteritve reaction that will tear apart everything in its path for a time... for a distance... for some space.
I get lost in the infinitely complex... Want to feel something creepy? Think of your brain... think of your brain thinking of a brain... now keep doing it... You, a finite being can hold an infinite number of constructions in your head. You can envision a physical infinity but cannot endure an infinite time. I often wonder if we will find the mobious loop between the very large, and the very small... Maybe there isn't one. Maybe the whole is contained in every particle of the part, maybe not. The finite composed of the infinite... Seems to make a nice explaination to why the anti-derivitive works so well...