The weight of the past is crushing sometimes. This website, my website, is seeped in memories, shadows of the life I live/was living hidden in each entry. I could tell you where I am/was when every single century on this site is being/was written. I forgot I know/will know that. For every word written and displayed, 1000 more stayed/will stay with me. I feel/felt/will feel the same distant eyes on me now. I am/will be looking back at this moment too. I hope I will/know I remember what was left unsaid.
There’s nothing mysterious about clothing, if you take the time to look closely. Go ahead, turn your pants inside out, run your fingers along the seams, and peer inside at the stitches along edges of fabric sheets. What you see is all that is there! Where else in this convoluted world do you get that kind of honesty? Sandwiches? You could take a shirt apart and put it back together without revealing any hidden structures or invisible glue or secret wiring. There’s no trick, just thread spun, woven, and stitched, and thousands of years fine-tuning one of our oldest arts.
Penny takes poorly to daylight savings, just as she has every year. The end of autumn, unlike her evening dry food, has arrived right on schedule, and she now spends her night snoozing in the window of my bedroom, above the radiator. My thermal leggings are once again daily wear, and the reassuring snugness reminds me of the last November. Outside, the leaves are almost fallen, and the few remaining trees shine in their radiant reds and golds in the 4:30pm setting sun. Change doesn’t have to be new. Sometimes the wheel just turns because that’s what it does.
A century is a craft, just as much construction as expression. A cheeky contraction here, a sentence reordering here. Which idea do I present cold, and which follows? Are there too many consecutive fricatives in one phrase? In such a small text, repeat words must be minimized, which can be tricky depending on the theme (this time that word is “sentence”. See how I avoid it?). Here at the last line I need just a few more words- what can be cut? What have I said that adds little, that can be sacrificed so my conclusion needn’t be [Limit Reached]
How much of me is in Penny, in her persistence and familiar presence? I am what I do, how I act, what I think, and my verbs would be different without her. Who am I without my personal spaces, my roommates, our kitchen, where we offload our worries, share our daily burdens, and lighten each others moods? How much am I shaped by my city, the sense of wonder given by beautiful architecture and seamless geography, and the ebb and flow of polarizing seasons? If these things are me, what if change leaves a hole that could never be re-filled?