Such a journey, this all continues to be.

Were you to ask me, at least, even though I know you weren’t. Not being able to speak for everyone, and certainly having no desire to. It is all the voices I hear that are not mine that are the main resource of vibrance of this existence. The source of the better flow of emotes and ideas. The sort of philosophical inspiration that brought me to any blank page to begin with. Never mind the thousands that have come before, meaning blank pages, and by this point, it must be at least that many. Never made a dime from any of it, which I only see as the reinforcement of the necessity of such behaviors.

Including this, one of my best bad behaviors.

I’ve been thinking about moments, lately. Those minuscule glimpses we retain in our own lifetimes. The sort that contain multitudes. Tiny eternities glanced and grasped in the short and seldom moments that echo throughout our existences.

I’ve collected a few, so far.

Some ages away, some only days. And a betting man might put a fair enough wager on there being more that your humble narrator might get his hands upon still. I know that I think of them, from time to time. The moments not yet wrought in the present. The hypotheticals, the fantasticals, the daydreams thunk up in the many dawns and dusks I’ve had and have yet to have. The sort where three hours feels like twenty minutes. And the sort that do not hold their true value until they are certainly, even if inexplicably, gone.

And though I wish to only recall the sweetest of these, I am not fool enough to ignore all the muck and mire already waded through. Not to say that I am not a fool, as I certainly am. A fool of choice, though. Not one of involuntary non-reflection. After all, I am not stupid. Perhaps tragically.

There are ghosts about these moments, or some of them. Phantoms sometimes of little more than my own creation. Some, slightly more influenced from the outside. The same way that there are ghosts about certain spaces, echoing of some time now passed, despite the total lack of reduction of potency. At times, they are nothing more than ghosts of some former self, which being a person lacking in spiritual superstitions, are the only ghosts I can ever know to be real.

I have this habit, in my moments of destitution. Some self-pitying vanity, perhaps. But onward I will gaze into some version of my own reflection. And from there, I will speak to whom I see looking back at me. My best-known stranger. He has these eyes, even when the world feels as though it is crumbling around him. Bright, sometimes seeming to emit some light, even if it is just from some cerebral wildfire raging within.

Upon pondering this reflection, even the dark circles underneath never seem to diminish the fervent radiation set forth. Often times, the contrast seems to only enhance boldness residing inside.

To be honest with you, which I always aim to be, and believe I always have been- I fear the day that those eyes glaze over their own light. Alive, just barely, and little more.

Or perhaps the more frightening prospect might be that covering never happening. A personal eternity of shining out into what eventually becomes total darkness. Just those eyes, back at me, and nothing more.

Either way, it is these oculars that tether themselves to this brain, the very same that commands the digits at the end of my wrists to clack away at meaning. A purpose that I may always be chasing, void plenty of robust dopamine or other such reward.

I am still working my way away from a tragedy that I know I can never actually escape in this sentience. Add it to the list, that cynical me hollers. Hold it close, says some more tender version. It will never be got at again, that what once was that has now passed. Better do your best to never forget it. For if you do that, it only exists in the abyss. You know, that place where nothing ever gets to exist again.

But tragedy is like that, especially as it dances its way through a timeline. The simultaneous push away and pull back in closer. The wanting to be free of the most beautiful shackle ever seen. The moments beyond your control that change everything from that point forward. Oh, sweet tragedy, won’t you sing me to sleep on whispers of what will never be again?

I know folks going through the makings of tragedies at this very moment. Or those so freshly gotten through some. As those who know me in any substantial sort of way, tend to know about the tragedies that I call home. Within such moments, we have chances to prove ourselves and for others to prove themselves to whoever has a mind to listen. Sorrow spares us little exploitation, if the right kind of confidence person be around.

Yet, I still have a trust in people. Particularly my people, but in a great many otherwise besides. And even when mistaken in the authenticity of that trust, enough remains to make the duds fade away, when adding enough time.

But anyway, moments, right? Was that the theme we agreed upon? Who can remember? That was dozens of words ago, after all. So many layman stanzas, cast about not unlike an ape going about with his own excrement. Ideas, the most human exclusive form of shit.

Hush now, cynical me. Enough has been had these weeks of late, of you and that naysaying. We know better than that. I know better than that.

Lucky me, truth be told.

I have been witnessing the digestion of one of my favorite stories through the eyes and expressed mind of one of the dearest humans I know. It’s how the whole idea of moments came about. How if even we could experience all of time in entirety by our choosing, we wouldn’t watch the whole thing. Horrid and horrible things may always be coming and going in and out of our lives. So even with some infinite expanse of time to perceive, it is best to reflect more upon the moments that reverberate beauty, more so than those that do not. Any being worth their intellectual salt, could never truly ignore what awful things regularly befall us, confined to this physical existence.

So anyway, moments.

They can resonate with the persons you used to be. And within those moments, you might realize that it is the person you have always spent all this time being.

So, anyway, a dear soul asked me, maybe in a roundabout sort of way of asking, this, very recently- ‘what’s inside of me and how do I make the best of it with the time I have left?’

I answered it in one way, hours ago, so let’s see if I can’t answer it again.

Inside of me? Well, even after all the jagged experiences, it is still the same sort of kid who made up a radio show on the school bus instead of whatever it was that everyone else was doing at the time. The same young man who in what he perceived as his greatest hour of destitution (quite laughable now) decided to start writing out the random thoughts that occurred in a weekly occurring instance. It is the man who made up a music festival, because all the doors most people would seek in seeking the thing he sought were closed, so he made his own.

Inside of me is what is inside of you. That eternal ache to know even when knowing you never can. That expansion of self that hopefully never abandons the essence that makes up the inexplicable soul I, or you, seem to have been born with. It is one of those ideas that only a vague word like love, or the like, can ever do well enough to encompass, be it for some self or some others.

Moments. I am so freshly reminded of their importance, at least in the non-heartbreaking way. The kind that remind you of bonds even over decades old. The sort that survive all the anguish existence seems to always cast. The sort that walking about Manhattan in the pouring rain can inspire. Eternally the same young man, no matter the day and age.

Or something like that.