The Spiral

Is anything ever really over?

Is there ever a hard line? The closer you look, the blurrier it gets.

I’ve always seen in far too many shades of grey for my own good. Clarity is not a natural by-product of my thinking. But there are times in my life I look back on, with the benefit of distance, and see that they have been completed. They are no longer swirling around me, impacting my existence. They are done. They didn’t come back from the dead, and there is zero risk that they ever will. They were, and, now, they are not.

Other things, well…we go round and round the carousel, and sometimes we forget how it looked from over here, until here we are again and, oh yes, just like last time. But different. But still.

It’s not clean, and it’s not easy, and if you don’t laugh you might cry. When will it be over? Maybe it’s just the kind of thing that never ends.

Imagining

There are so many beautiful, brutal, exquisitely illuminating human experiences playing out all over the world every single moment.

Sometimes I imagine them, and wonder if they’re real.

Sometimes I wonder if all our imaginings are simply us being offered a glimpse of another’s reality. Another being; another time; another world. Would that be more or less extraordinary? Is our gift, our skill, measured by our ability to build up out of the abyss, or to say what we see with deftness and clarity, as we peer through the portal we’ve happened upon?

I don’t know, and I don’t think I need to, but I like to imagine what could be true.

Grief

There is so much to grieve.

Who we could have been. Who we’ll never be.

What we could have had. What we did have and lost. What we’ve never been, and will never be, even anywhere close to having.

There is so much to grieve. And so little time to grieve in. We could live our entire life in grief. But where would be the life in that?