Thoughts

How do you approach inevitability? How do you confront the thought that every "Once Upon a Time" must and will tumble to the simple two words "The End"? That every high-pitched baby's cry will be paired, equal and opposite, with the man's last gasp some dozens of years later? The closer we get to the doorstep, the more we beg time for another chance, the harder we cry, the more we try to grab at the confetti falling among us, knowing we cannot hold onto everything but trying nevertheless. We want an encore, we need a last dance. Is this not the curse of knowing you will fall to some disease? A Huntington-positive gene, a diagnosis of cancer, a baby with Ondine's curse? We will all depart sometime, somewhere, but it seems all so much more tragic when we can tell exactly when and how we will leave. If you have not experienced this dread of impending departure, I hope you never do.

I wrote something last year when I hardly understood the gravity of rhetoric and the opposite of fate: "In a blink, a heartbeat, it'll all be over, dust in the air, words pluming from my mouth, hyperventilating incoherence. A word, two, a hundred, a thousand - but even photographs are futile attempts to stop this magnificent mane-throwing beast, charging one-way and never looking back. When you draw optics ray diagrams in physics, you see that the beams converge and diverge, each following its own self-illuminated path. Here we come, focused, interlocking, hands reaching out. Can I grasp yours? Will you hold on? Will I swing you around, Texas Tommy, or latch onto your shoulders, Atlas of the blue cap? Is my influence so great? Are my crutches so weary? And yet, I ask these questions knowing far too well that the interwoven strands of Fate gaze down upon us, intolerable and reminding. How far can these manacles extend? How tight are the knots of this rope? Will I succumb to the fear that I shall be cast away an empty shell, a satellite orbiting the past, letting gravity like wine seep through my fingers as I try to find meaning and place in this beautiful, lonely world?"

Congratulations. I defer to the unyielding mistress of time. Goodbye.