May 31st, 2025
I've been wondering why life has felt so chaotic and fast lately and then realized I wasn't writing much of it down. Not here.
I haven't been processing correctly. Instead of developing my memories and experiences in a quiet darkroom, investigating their details and exploring their mysteries as they slowly materialize, I've been taking a thousand cell phone photos a day, not stopping to think or feel or reflect.
Feeling, for me, can be a problem that leads to other problems; the bigger the feeling, the bigger the problem, and I have a feeling big problem. I was thinking about that this morning, water falling down my face, trying to catch as little as I could.
Today is my mom's birthday; it's the end of May, the unofficial end of Spring, the end of a spell where I didn't write things down on the internet.
How do we cope? With any of it? I have ten new ideas for essays that will save us every single day, topics from politics to community to grief to recovery but, as soon as I start writing them, my big thoughts and big feelings lead to big problems, none as big as the fear of apathy. Do my words matter? My thoughts or feelings? Does anybody's? In a world where so many of us have already made up our minds and know everything there is to know, what is the point of creating our points?
I find myself getting frustrated a lot. I can't pinpoint it. I try to be patient and my brain floods like a boat engine. I can feel the anxiety in the veins circuiting my neck, bubbles of electric stress rising through my blood; it's in the back of my throat, pooling like existential acid.
Life doesn't feel fast; it is fast. We are forever catching up until we just can't run anymore. The Earth might feel you on her scalp for a moment and then you're not.
We do our best to develop the time, to let it reveal itself to us; to not just look at it, but to see it; to frame it and put it on our wall or stick it in our pocket and hope dearly it doesn't fall out.
I do that by writing it down and lately I haven't been doing that enough. I'm so sorry. Not to you and not to me. But to time. And to my mom, because I let that time here go by too fast.
I miss her so much, but if she's outside time right now, I know she's having a blast. Eternity doesn't move fast; eternity doesn't have to rush. There aren't people trying to get one last conversation in before the mosquitoes eat them up on the front porch. The beer and brandy doesn't run out and the Coke is always cold. The animal on your lap wouldn't want to be anywhere else. The sun doesn't rise or set and her party never has to end at all.
I hope, despite everything I do and don't believe, that is true.