the folly of youth
Don't ask me why - really, just don't. But whilst trolling through Myspace, as I am wont to do [as opposed to actually create or produce something meaningful] - I saw a photograph of a total stranger that made my heart ache.
Ache.
This photo was not a great photo, and it didn't really seem to betray any more than a thousand other Myspace pictures posted there to give someone a 'sense' of who the person behind the profile might be. But the photo was of a 21-year old girl, staring out an upper-story window, onto a city snowscape at magic hour. I didn't think she was overly beautiful, or that the scene was tortuously sentimental. What happened is that I got one of those immediate, intense, inescapable full-body memories. But this wasn't like smelling pumpkin pie and conjuring a clear picture of that one Thanksgiving when you were six years old. It wasn't a memory of anything-- I guess it was remembering how something *felt*.
Something, I realized, I haven't felt in many many years. Maybe ten years. Maybe more.
I was filled with that aching promise, that melancholy blended into belief, that deep and sincere sensation that things *matter*, that life is heavy and long and full of trials -- but it's a great feeling. It's a romantic feeling; one felt so truly when you are 21, looking out a window at twilight... and you've just broken up with someone. Or heard that perfect song. Or imagined a far-off day when you're running the world. Feeling the pain of a best friend scorned, a family member ailing, a very-real sense of youth escaping you. That you know it all and what you know first and foremost is that there's a lot more to know than just knowing it all.
Jesus, it's such a tremendously powerful and wonderful feeling. I wonder if I ever realized, in those moments as a young person, just how amazing and holistic that sensation was. Just how perfectly monducious. How rare it would become.
I don't think I will ever feel that way again. In fact, had I not had this experience, I might have never known I felt that way ever before. What is worse? To know you'll never capture that intensity, or to have had a stab of it - for even the flashing instant it was there - one more time?
Dunno.
God, being old is empty. It's so much hurry-up-and-wait for shit that's scarcely worth showing up for. Planning on things that might or might not happen but ultimately won't make you happy anyway. Imagining a greater future but to know you are only imagining.
Being in love isn't an option. Sculling off to Cuba is just a bad idea. Staying up late has consequences. The body is soft, quick to injure, unreliable.
And there's no passion. Passion is just too fucking much to dredge up.
God, that hurts worse than anything.
Ache.
This photo was not a great photo, and it didn't really seem to betray any more than a thousand other Myspace pictures posted there to give someone a 'sense' of who the person behind the profile might be. But the photo was of a 21-year old girl, staring out an upper-story window, onto a city snowscape at magic hour. I didn't think she was overly beautiful, or that the scene was tortuously sentimental. What happened is that I got one of those immediate, intense, inescapable full-body memories. But this wasn't like smelling pumpkin pie and conjuring a clear picture of that one Thanksgiving when you were six years old. It wasn't a memory of anything-- I guess it was remembering how something *felt*.
Something, I realized, I haven't felt in many many years. Maybe ten years. Maybe more.
I was filled with that aching promise, that melancholy blended into belief, that deep and sincere sensation that things *matter*, that life is heavy and long and full of trials -- but it's a great feeling. It's a romantic feeling; one felt so truly when you are 21, looking out a window at twilight... and you've just broken up with someone. Or heard that perfect song. Or imagined a far-off day when you're running the world. Feeling the pain of a best friend scorned, a family member ailing, a very-real sense of youth escaping you. That you know it all and what you know first and foremost is that there's a lot more to know than just knowing it all.
Jesus, it's such a tremendously powerful and wonderful feeling. I wonder if I ever realized, in those moments as a young person, just how amazing and holistic that sensation was. Just how perfectly monducious. How rare it would become.
I don't think I will ever feel that way again. In fact, had I not had this experience, I might have never known I felt that way ever before. What is worse? To know you'll never capture that intensity, or to have had a stab of it - for even the flashing instant it was there - one more time?
Dunno.
God, being old is empty. It's so much hurry-up-and-wait for shit that's scarcely worth showing up for. Planning on things that might or might not happen but ultimately won't make you happy anyway. Imagining a greater future but to know you are only imagining.
Being in love isn't an option. Sculling off to Cuba is just a bad idea. Staying up late has consequences. The body is soft, quick to injure, unreliable.
And there's no passion. Passion is just too fucking much to dredge up.
God, that hurts worse than anything.