Trying to not think so finitely, but I suppose the hardware is flawed in that way. Most of the software, as well. As this particular collection of unassuming atoms thrives and survives on a scale pertaining to this specific communion, a biome, this electrical and organic cacophony called I, with its eventual expiration date. Not the atoms themselves, of course, just this conglomeration. The particles go on, as they have and will continue to do for immeasurable time. Someday, parts of your humble narrator will make up at least part of something else entirely. As will you, dear reader.

As is the case for the present tense of things. All this, once part of something else. Might be I am the Ship of Theseus. Or a single molecule the same as Alexander the Great. Or, just what used to be a piece of heaping, frozen mammoth excrement. Hell, could even be a combination of the whole lot. We’ll never know, since we seem to be unable to ask our atoms directly, as if they were even capable of remembering, if they wanted to.

I’m thinking I shouldn’t bother the particles by asking to remember much of me. Arrogant to assume such worth, anyway.

So, onward, as this atom amalgamation attempts further, despite failures, at worthwhile deeds.

Been pondering honesty, today. Within and without myself. It is one of those ancient desires you can read about. The quest for truth. And judging upon no one really having gotten a handle of such an idea, without filling in the gaps with faith, I’d have to assume that we will keep onward with such inquiries.

So, where to start?

The truth of the universe is a little beyond my pay grade, I must confess. Unless you count poetic truths, which are a faith in and of themselves. So internally, I’ve been attempting to dig. At the source of all my perception, this vessel with the ticking timer.

There are those that claim to know themselves, truly and utterly. And if not liars, I would have to believe them to at the very least to be philosophical con artists, even if unintentionally. As a living thing marching through time, the consistency is within the change. To know yourself isn’t some destination, something that you can just figure out one day and then from hence forth it is only this pure version of self, parading around with confidence and charm. Each moment, even the ones where nothing seems to happen, or especially so in those, we are impacted. Either the outward forces pushing in, or our fight from within to the large universe, as far as the might of a single beast may reach.

I am different from this morning. From yesterday and a year ago, and boy, what a year. I have changed even within the few moments that have passed since sitting down to this evening’s ramble. So, the quest for that honest self goes about the adaptation dance. Sometimes you’re Fred Astaire. Other times, you have half a dozen left feet, with their shoelaces all tied together, and your pants embarrassingly pulled down around your ankles. Brace for impact, metaphysically speaking.

Makes it all seem a bit futile, right? I could easily see how that might be, but in my spirit of defiance, that sometimes seems to be drowning me, I’ll challenge that nihilistic perspective.

So, contained inside that tumultuous sentience moving through time, there are throughlines that appear. Perhaps just the peak of maddening pattern seeking, but to me it appears that there are themes that can emerge quite early and hold fast, despite damage, demerits and detriments. Unspoken oaths to beliefs that even when contrived from elsewhere, become something essential to our identities. Ambitions non-specific and altruisms undeniable. The vague romantic ideals that have less to do with the pursuit of people and more to do with the pursuit of spirit. And the obligation to causes that may appear without names or descriptions, but remain steady, all the same.

I need not get into mine in order for your own mind to start conjuring a few of these themes that you might hold for yourself. It puts pens in hands and songs in the air. You know, that sort of thing.

And naturally, it is never so cut and dry. It is confounding and incomprehensible. It is exhausting and engulfing. It is always unattainable and yet, desired so fervently, that we may never escape the gravity of some of our self-made voids. Which is not to knock voids. There are ideas proposed by minds much sharper than mine that suggest the whole of our universe is contained within a blackhole. Which is quite a thing to think about, especially for a working-class autodidactic polymath, such as myself. Can make one seem downright puny and insignificant, as though it were a middle school dance.

But I suppose I should try and parse out a few of these themes of my own, if for nothing else, to up the word count.

I have, despite everything I know and have seen, this desire for peace. Knowing full well it may never be attainable in my lifetime, either species wide or just inside myself. Yet the hope, the want, is still there. That a living peacefulness can at least be gotten closer to, if never actually within grasp. That steps can be taken forward even after a million ones backwards, to bring about better tomorrows than there have been yesterdays. This is something that has not gotten easier with time, but I would like to think the skill set for adapting has grown moderately, if not exponentially. Stronger for every fall.

There is the desire for joy. Explosive and simple and everything in-between. The fires that come from feeling truly alive, and the sensations of satiation that might arise from the most miniscule of things. And of course, the contradictory sorrows that always accompany such happiness on the path. Things get lost, or we get lost from them, or in them. We go, or they go, or it all goes away, as it will, eventually. And the emptiness that can be felt when whatever efforts might be made, the joy never arrives quite like had been hoped. And within all that, the ideas of love, that inexplicable human reality in all its forms, both pure and convoluted. The love for life, for families chosen and otherwise. Never mind the more popular connotation for the word. Unless, of course, that is something that you might be feeling. Who am I to deny that?

And in these ideas of thematic honesties, I can never stray too far from contemplating my mistakes. The ones made now history. The ones that I might be making at this very moment, without a conscious thought available for their consideration. And the ones that I have still yet to make, as my imagination always falls short of seeing them coming until they have arrived and passed by. Either as a soft end of summer breeze, or an out-of-control freight train loaded with explosives on its trip right into a brick wall.

  But my attempts to learn from faults and failures helps to keep my head above the existential waters, even in conditions unkind or outright violent. I try and take something worthwhile from them all, perhaps especially the tragedies. And I should get better at embracing certain goods that are occurring in irregular regularity.

I still think of the future, even with all this past. And even when overly modest, I try and take some credit for deeds done well. It is good to want to do more, but likely a crime to entirely deny what has already been done. And in this life, I have done plenty. It’s just that there is so much more I would like to do. To know. To feel.

And even within the diminishing timeline, I attempt to remember that there is still time left. Enough that I can feel myself wasting it, from time to time. Though that might be a matter of my own personal opinion.

But there is more fight to be got at elsewhere, so I’d best get on it. Who knows, maybe I’m about to figure it all out in the next few hours. I don’t imagine it likely, but I try not to think of anything as entirely impossible. Even when it is.