introspective periscope : peeking inside since Y2K ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- the problem of personal identity 8:16 p.m. - 2002-06-13 "if we leave now, we could be there soon...when your eyes light up out of the blue, you scream 'its a miracle!""~josh rouse on nights like tonight, i can feel a little bit of the girl from two summers ago. that summer was so incredible. it was independent and riding my bike to work in the morning. it was green khakis and hemp necklaces with beads made to match every flower in the oak grove. it was sun tan and losing weight on a diet of macaroni and cheese and cheese sandwiches. it was thunderstorms and puddle jumping and running and sliding on the wet grass of the lawn of the honours college and behind keith hall. it was smoking a little pot and watching ben stein on television and having that crush on someone who lived across the state but secretly knowing it would never amount to much. glass hearted boys are always the wrong route. it was learning how to be myself. it was a mismatched bathroom with the olive tub and the yellow toilet and the marble sink. it was moving one fan from room to room and no screens in the windows and laughing. it was the way it felt to ride all the way up that hill on seventh street that was an intimidating six blocks long for the first time...and the second time...and the third time and all the times after that and knowing that the blood was pulsing through my veins for a good reason....not because of some boy or sobbing lonely tears or being this close to psychotic and broken hearted. it was free. it was everything that being around him wasn't. it was everything that i miss. and on nights like tonight, i can almost smell the air in that small town. i can almost hear the faint laughter on the breeze of a tree lined street of summer students from the bars uptown in that college town. i can almost feel the electricity of those storms. i can almost hear the morning traffic raging past my window. i can almost feel it.... and i'm not saying that where i am now is any worse by any means. its just that....without that summer, i don't think i would be who i am today. and now, i understand what they mean when they say that we are not who we were then. because i'm not. but i know, deep down, that i'm who i am now because of the girl i was then. and knowing that, i just want to give that girl a shout out...an few moments of applause....a hug. i want to give her a moment in the limelight because she didn't have any idea then that the girl i am today would look back on that summer as the best in her life so far. she had no idea how far she would go.....what she might become. she just was herself and happy. she was so happy and it was infectious. its a miracle. simply a miracle. so i keep trying to remind myself of myself, past and future....and trying to make each moment something that the girl i am two years from now will look back on with as much happiness as i feel t h i s v e r y s e c o n d. simply a miracle. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- .what came before. - .what happened next. a diamond at the bottom of the drain - 20 october 2017 |
||||||
|
||||||