A Trip Upon Your Magic Swirlin' Ship

I always hear about our life flashing before our eyes when we die. But this happens to me daily. I didn't always notice it until one day while sitting on the bed, I became acutely aware that I am actually "here, now". I could extend my limbs and marvel that they are mine. And it seemed as if the very sands of time were slipping before my fingers and that I could grasp them but only barely. In my mind I was humming the song by Hootie and the Blowfish. "Now only lasts one second,one second..." Images of my little tragedies and triumphs passed in front of me. I was transported to that old house in front of the school. Ah, how I loved playing in the school yard and hitting bats with our slippers until my father dragged us home at twilight. I can vividly see myself lying in the roofless part of our terrace with my aunt while it rained and lightning danced across the sky. Oh, the fun I had... even the hiding we usually got for breaking house rules was adventure in itself.

Then there was high school, my coming of age. And college, what a turning point it was! Along came the life-altering event that was Bengt and the absolute lifeblood of my existence: Smolhauz, Nearthelake, and Silentdwelling. Truly... I have achieved that only surviving drive in me, that is, being able to say like Nelson Moss in Sweet November, "...this is it. Life will never be better or sweeter than this..."

And yet how funny that I could look back and still feel a certain distance from all of it. It happens all the time. I start with realizing that I am a living, breathing thing...but that it could all end any minute, that life is so beautiful yet such a joke to someone like me who doesn't bank on The Great Perhaps. I could die right now and yet the world would certainly go on. How utterly preposterous that this is true of anyone whether we like it or not!