her shadow

somehow

i previously wrote that my person is more of a shadow in this place than a glow. but i guess that depends on what i meant by “this place”¹. because when i turn off my mind and put myself at the mercy of my own legs,

i always end up here.

and that isn’t a bad thing. one of the special things about this place is how _^smol it makes me feel. after all, the universe declines toward chaos and decay and all i can do is grasp for stability and permanence by trying to carve out a solid sense of self in a mere blink of existence.

and in so doing, i am reminded of a book full of blue and pink quotes, which i will stitch together in hopes of bringing light to her shadow.

feelings

are the most perishable of our possessions. even more so than opinions. for an opinion (which is qualitatively different from an impression or a borrowed stance) is arrived at through a well-reasoned argument with oneself. not so a feeling. feelings coalesce out of the vapors that escape from the deepest groundwaters of our unreasoned and unreasonable being. whatever rainbows they may scatter may diffuse just as readily, and just as mysteriously. but even the greatest of which

exist only for a time.

the scales of time are elastic, contracting and expanding with the depth of each love. but they are not infinite. the triumph is in the courage and integrity with which we inhabit the transcendent transience for the time before it evaporates. the triumph is in the courage and integrity with which we let it go. but every once in a while,

pure chance intercedes to remind me

that whatever structures of control we put into place, however much we may mistake the illusion of choice for the fact of choice, randomness is the reigning monarch of the universe. it follows, then, that history is not what happened (much like time is not a steady arc). rather, it is what survives the shipwrecks of chance.

chance shook me into awareness – into humility – to the fragility of a world that flourished long before i trampled it with my arrogant footsteps.

that world should continue to flourish long after i have gone.