2002-07-02 - 4:28 a.m.: smoothie

"today is the first day of the rest of your life."

isn't that what they say? what does this *mean* though? does it emphasize "today," "first," "rest" or "life?" or "your"? does it mean that you should value today because of what it can lead to? (and not for what you are feeling, right here, right now?) does it mean you should de-value the past because it doesn't count anymore? (but exists in fragments of memory and photographs that can be torn up or forgotten or re-considered?) does it mean that the rest of your life is only measured in days and there's really no avoiding the fact that you're already speeding your way there? (in moments, seconds, hours, days, years.... the relativity of time depending not on the sun or atomic clocks but on where you are, and how you perceive this point?) is it supposed to be a happy thought? (or is it supposed to depress the hell out of you, considering that your entire life has consisted of "the rest of your life" since the moment you first drew in breath or established a regular heartbeat (whatever the scientists are saying, now).. that you've already used up a good part of it... that you have "a little less life" than you started with. is life TIME? is time LIFE? why do we use them interchangeably? "he's at the end of his life." "she hasn't got much time left." "we're all running out of time." can you run out of time? or can you merely fail to use it properly? is it like money... where it is either well-spent or wasted? is it like space, where it gives you just enough freedom to move around until you hit a wall? are we doomed because we're running in blind straight lines instead of exploring with our hands? why DON'T dreams have time? how can they have sequence? DO they have sequence or do we just organize them that way after we wake up? is that why they don't make sense-- because we leave out the important stuff to make them fit into our idea of what reality should be?

are these ridiculous things to be thinking about?

i just get so sad, sometimes, when i think about the many many ways to spend a day. is this living? is walking around thinking about living LIVING? is asking questions that can't be answered thinking? is there a product that we're aiming for? am i missing some important point? or is the point of it all simply to explore? to look for a point? is it a JOKE? i don't see the punchline.

i love life. i love living. i don't know what that is. i don't know what being entails... i think sometimes i do it right because there are times when i feel SO aware, SO in touch with myself and so... connected & disconnected with the world at the same time... as though i am viewing myself from a detached standpoint, reading a poem i've helped to write.... hearing my own voice recorded or my face filmed.... seeing something in motion that is at once intimately familiar and alien. being NowHere.

this is all going to sound trite and over-worked or re-worked and straight out of some silly teen melodrama. oh well.

*sigh*

i think i could be a very religious person if there wasn't so much time to wonder. i definitely have the room.

i got a letter from lush today (a real one, in an envelope, with sand in it)... it was so beautiful it made me want to cry... boticelli beaches and cherub-baby butts with sunscreen. i could see it through his eyes and it was so different. so real, vivid... tangible and stark. i wouldn't have written it that way, and that is what is so beautiful. words are so beautiful.

i'm too indecisive to think about tattoos. thank god the brain is rewritable.... i'd be scarred by now.

inward...outward