thinking

Sometimes it is a wonder to me that we live at all, that any of us survive longer than a number of days or weeks or years. In my mind I seem to swing back and forth between thinking that no amount of procrastination will ever sap dry the wellspring of my time here, and so I dawdle, and pick, and slouch, and on the opposite extreme I wait for any moment to be my last by means of hemorrhage or bomb or stray car through my bedroom window. Arriving here and spending time with children for the first time since childhood, I was initially overwhelmed because in those plump and unmarked faces I saw deep wrinkles set by the vanished elasticity of skin, age marks like the spots on a giraffe's neck, eyes dim with age and teeth made by human hands to replace those that ate too many meals, spoke too many words. In the rail-thin and flawless bodies of the young, I see the curved spines of girls who grew up in times of war and the birth of the silver-screen. In the elderly, I see myself, distantly, peering back on my youthful beauty and exorbitance with a mixed nostalgia and peaceful resignation.

I like to think that using my brain and being aware of the oxygen flowing in an out of my lungs, the weakening of my stomach and back muscles from this constant slouching, being aware of my aging gives me some sort of advantage. Perhaps if I can stay ahead of the pack I can stretch my years longer, push off the inevitable conclusion of nothingness. But for all the smoke I blow up my own ass, I am a base creature. There is no magic in my head. Despite all my days and minutes already spent on this earth observing and making connections, my thoughts are no more profound or meaningful than those of a little child. My desires are as simple as the creatures that crawled out of the sea when the world was fresh as a newborn baby. And somewhere between this very second and years in the future, I will cease function, likely having made no more and no less impact than everyone else arriving and moving about on this planet.

I always thought when I was younger I would never live past 20. I am rapidly approaching that arbitrary measurement of time, surely to go flying past it in the prime form of a young person. I thought my only specialty in this world was knowing myself with hypersensitive accuracy, but as I approach this strange beast labeled adulthood I feel I am losing touch while my body rides the express train of time. I cannot slow the train or get off. I can only watch as my body is ushered forward, faster and faster, towards the last stop- the indestructible wall on the tracks. I have always felt old. An old soul. But like every other human who has come before me, at first naiive and plump and playful, finally jaded and withered and looking away, looking for anything to look at but the obvious, I am realizing my body was younger then than it is now, and this process is going to continue.

I am still young, but somehow hearing the chorus of awe at my age only seems to hammer in the final nail of realization. I am getting older.
It is an unpleasantly oily medicine to swallow.