Just a Pretty Picture

Days are passing so quickly. I practice piano, I read (I have three books going right now), I watch TV (le gasp! I'm just sadly addicted to birth shows, Swords, Dirty Jobs, and basically anything involving animals), and I work, work, work. It's amazing how much time it takes to accomplish adult errands like scrounging for nourishing victuals. I liked it much better when bagels and peanut butter magically manifested before my very eyes on hideous plastic tupperware plates and summer days were long with daydreams, Nintendo, rain dancing, trampoline bouncing and 15-minute between-swims breaks at the pool that felt epically endless because I was itching to dive back into the water.

It seems like only last week I was admiring brand new leaves that the summer caterpillars hadn't yet munched, reminiscing upon a similar day last year when I did the same... Now this year's leaves are quite nommed, and yellowing at the corners. I suddenly find myself living with another human, and I'm responsible for two other living, breathing, pooping-puking-meowing-sneezing-chewing beings (Jesper got the smackdown the other night when he chewed on S's computer wires).

Over the weekend, I visited my parents, who were cleaning out their garage. I found my mom standing in front of the Green Trunk in the driveway, and it was open. I've never seen the Green Trunk - container of her childhood mementos, letters, and love notes - opened before in my life. It was kept under lock and key and a hundred pounds of paint cans, roller blades and plant food. Together we read through her dating detritus, laughing helplessly at the unbridled sap. My mother dated so much compared to her daughters (who are all pretty damn cute), and every single boyfriend fell desperately in love with her, to her horror! There were funny notes, serious notes, clever notes, naive notes... And notes from my dad, which where the most terse, technical and blunt of them all.

Ah, now you know what's going on! I'm going on one of my regular "OMG, time flies" rants and you're RIGHT! I am.

Well, I had a minor breakdown last night, in bed at midnight, of course. Why don't my breakdowns happen during my free time?

I've been thinking about "purpose." It's easy to see that a large number of people on this earth are perfectly happy spending their lives chasing after new BMWs, more stamps on their passports, prettier smiles, larger breasts, a bigger herd of goats, a more opulent yurt, a larger assemblage of goodies. Amassing goodies is considered ambitious, enterprising, a surefire path to winning. I keep thinking of the last scene in the hilarious British comedy Time Bandits; Satan is using a faux game show contest to lure the main characters toward The Most Fabulous Object in the World, and thus traps them and steals the map of the space-time continuum, which they in turn stole from The Supreme Being, causing the whole fiasco in the first place. I feel like much of my life has been a game show contest enticing me toward my Fabulous Object, and now I've realized that the Fabulous Object isn't an object at all, and that it can't be pursued. It doesn't run, it doesn't hide, PhDs won't assist one in understanding its nature, our hatred of our faults and brokenness doesn't dispel the fog that surrounds it, striving toward perfection isn't a sieve fine enough to capture it. There is no Fabulous Object through which to define my own fabulosity.

I came to the tearful, childish, now-amusing conclusion that I was a leech attached to one of the arteries of the universe and really good at sucking. No jokes, please. I wanted something, a religion, some sort of set of rules to follow or rituals to perform that would define me in... My own head? In my own head as it relates to my concept of what I may or may not look like through the eyes of others? Bah! Do I have a real desire for evolution, or am I just jealous of the evolution of others, of their passion, of their piety and lack of jagged edges? Am I just bored?

When I write my thoughts out like this, I'm overcome by overwhelming weariness. There's a certain ego in mystery, in asking oneself "who am I?" and answering, "I am undefinable! I am without limits! Not even I understand myself! I am infinite in my evanescent, unknowable foreveritude! ROAR!" Delineating mysterious, vague things is kind of disappointing. Kind of sad to realize that all of your heartrending, earth-shattering ideas are just a little bit more complex than the wit-wandering emo poetry that large numbers of teenagers scribble into the margins of their Botany books every day. About the same reading level, too.

When will I find myself worthy and capable of evolution?