Funny, you know?

How a day unfolds before each of these. And how the days fold out afterward. Glory and consequences and such. Insignificance and torrential emotional barrage. Take your pick, they’ve all happened as of late and historically, somewhere near one of these weekly rambles.

And within all that action of passing through time, there are these. Self-manufactured moments of philosophical amber. An hour or so, given on a regularly occurring day, to ponder out this life.

Someone who I had recently met who had been reading some of these before our meeting referred to these thought experiments as ‘deeply philosophical’. Quite flattering, and I suppose, it is the approach that gets taken. But it is all layman philosophics, as a professional of this I cannot honestly call myself. Not that I’m sure the job title of philosopher is something is even available on the market in these new and strange days we find ourselves living.

But we have no hope of gaining depth if we keep mucking about in the introductions. This is not an academic piece, at least not in intention, so no need for the formalities that something closer aligned with a thesis might require.

My life, being the hubristic subject matter at play here, is only so much driven by want. No matter how great and influential those urges may be, there is little space set between the necessities set forth for me to be able to navigate much of my desires in some consistent and long-term way. And even within those occasional slivers of life, I still feel as though so much of it ends up being squandered. But that may just be due to my personality defect of always trying to accomplish more and more, and more.

Or perhaps, I am just being theatrical. I’ve been known to have such an affliction, from time to time. Sometimes, I even bother others with my theatrics, but honest, no bad intentions there. Just accidental chaos, from a cluttered and overactive mind working its way outward, at least partially motivated by the attention craved by my at times insatiable ego.

I am not inconsistently reminded of the finality of it all, though. That this too shall certainly pass, maybe with little more than a whisper left behind, if even that much. Or immediately in the waste bin of history’s annals, maybe even before this organic timeline of mine runs its course. Dust, ash, floated off by an indifferent breeze, just as had been for the so many countless forgotten that were all here before me. And all those forgotten yet to be, some not even whisked away into existence, without consent or proper degree.

It is a fickle enough thing, this life we living call home. A minority state as far as existence, even more so when you consider the sentience aspect that we humans love to go on and on about, your humble narrator included. But you can read all about the easy come and go of living human things in the newspaper, every day, if those things are even still around. Newspapers, meaning. You can see all about this precious, fragile thing being ripped away, left and right, without even much emotion seeming to be involved in the act. An indifferent universe playing out, plucking souls with relative indiscriminate regard, and eventually, the fate we’ve been set for since we arrived here, naked, for certain, and likely screaming.  

The reminder of our finite nature can be broadcast in body counts or wars half a world away.

Or more up close. Like holding witness to the wail of a freshly made widow, crying out and begging, if not demanding, acts of god of the men and women who arrive to help when such distress calls get made, though it was too late before a phone ever got picked up. Another moment, she cries out in will worn wishes, another moment with he who is now a corpse gone cold. With whatever life once residing in the now static flesh, long gone, hours before, sometime in the dark of night. Nothing left but a mound that nature has set for decay, slumped over in his favorite chair, wedding photos but an arms reach away, if reaching where something those arms were able to still engage in. So it goes.

And being a living thing, still, walking away, humbled by inability, as the howls of grief grow distant, until the poor bastard’s shuttle to the morgue arrives. Plenty reminder in something like that, which is occurring in regularity. Every day. Right now, I’m sure, somewhere on this rock of a home.

But before we grow too grim, I’ll remind you that impending finality is the beauty of our existence. Maybe mountains don’t have such worries, but we, with a full life spanning shy of a century, even with all our perceived advances- we are reminded all the time of the ticking clocks of biology. The smallest cut of a finger, and how easily our minds can expand and extrapolate to realize that unchecked our precious liquids are simply enough ejected. A sprung leak might be the end, easy and accidental even.

But that pressure, that deadline- I can’t say for you, but I do assume, that such perspectives remind us of our limited scope of time, and the aggressive motivator for the ever-onward type of mindset that can be. One I personally subscribe to, even when difficult. Especially when difficult. It will all be gone, so get at what you mean to get at before it all gets gone. If you can, that is. But certainly try, me thinks, and that is coming from a fellow with no shortage of failures.

For last week, I had dug through old images. The gift and curse of our digital times. And in a moment of near insidious self-indulgence, I looked up one that would otherwise have been lost to time. I know I shouldn’t have, but I did. You know, like Lot’s wife. So human, that pillar of salt.

And looking at it, along with all the memories inspired to come rushing back, I felt a sense of breadth regarding my own identity made in flesh and spirit. So young. So different. So much still the same, be that in play to tragedy or comedy, or some pitiable combination of the two. The ideas and dreams and desires- how they’ve failed and survived and transformed into new formations, all recycled from the old. And the paths our lives weave within those we encounter. The ones that continue on, perhaps ebbing and waning within the timelines. And those that are gone. Lost, in one way or another. Unsure if they will ever emerge again, or more certain that they won’t.

But an image isn’t the only invocation of such sentiment. Had another, today, putzing about my day-to-day duties.

Walking up the stairs, a tune from a record my daughter selected struck. Anyone paying close enough attention might have been forewarned of the arrival, but my temporary ignorance led to the sonic surprise attack.

Unstuck in time, for a moment, as the low angle near solstice sun seethed in and filled my home with an amber glow, I fell back to a rainy spring afternoon, over a decade ago. A passenger in my father’s car, leaving Manhattan. While he mildly ranted about a parking ticket received, and myself professionally clad for a career path long since abandoned, I gazed out upon the rain collecting on the window. Weaving their weary paths, and dying. The same song was playing on the radio. I was thinking of my future, not in the vein that reality ended up taking, but who could ever predict such things? And I was thinking of a love that was never to be. But I didn’t know that then, and firmly believed the opposite at the time. But the song was then, as it was today, and am stuck dancing within it, to whatever wave the tune might sway me too.

Funny thing, music and memory.

But all the macabre thoughts on doom, I know I am still very much full of life. And have very much I still aim to be getting at. The fight is there, even when more subdued than at times otherwise. And the desires are there, be they some continuation of the old. Or something new, even if as equally fated to fail.

I proved my life upon a stage, not a few days ago. In costume and character, somehow in more truth than might be gotten from my proper identity, I showed a crowd of at least half strangers that the introvert still has plenty to exert outward. And the chops and enthusiasm to do it well. Doubt will never get that far from me, I’m sure. But as long as it is kept from overwhelming amounts, I still believe uncertainty is a tool for keeping limber to the necessary adaptations our lives must take when expectations get missed, be it by a millimeter or a mile. A skill I have managed to become adept with to a regular degree. But something that has not so hardened my heart to not be able to believe the impossible.

And before this is all through, meaning my life, much more will be achieved and attained and washed away. And I aim to best rise to each occasion as they occur, with whatever the next best move might be. I don’t know about planning ages ahead, it always seemed like a shortsighted idea to me. But I have had to adapt in ways that many of my peers have not, so perhaps my perspective is skewed. But that abstract mind is still one of my greatest weapons, one that I do not plan to have grow in rust and rot.

But today has gotten most of what it will get out of me. We shall see about tomorrow, but that is always a day away, anyway.