Do You Realize - that you have the most beautiful face
Do You Realize - we're floating in space -
Do You Realize - that happiness makes you cry
Do You Realize - that everyone you know someday will die
And instead of saying all of your goodbyes - let them know
You realize that life goes fast
It's hard to make the good things last
You realize the sun doesn't go down
It's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round --Ye Olde Flaming Lips
So, okay. I think God is having fun tossing shit at my life. My aunt just died in a freak car accident. Jasmine's got her things I'd rather not discuss without her permission. I've got my own personal shit. And now my family's in mourning over one of my mom's and everyone's favorite people.
And yet... I can't seem to feel anything but numb. It's like I can sense everything, and it all sucks, but all I feel is a great irrepressible desire to leave, to get the fuck outta dodge, to "Alright Ramblers, let's get ramblin'." I feel apathetic, I feel mean and cold.... Yet that's how it seems that I'm reacting to this... Cold, yet affected. Aware, self-aware. Amazed. Awe-struck.
I'm so small. I feel like I should do something but, when I ask advice, I get garbled advice that emits from eight sources all at once, and all I can respond with is, "I don't know how to oriwejrjioewjio[wjriojw]!" All the advice I gets reminds of this passage from Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonfen Safran Foer:::::::::::::
"I found a payphone and called your mother, that's as far as my plan went, I assumed so much, that she was still alive, that she was in the same apartment I'd left forty years before, I assumed she would come pick me up and everything would begin to make sense, we would mourn and try to live, the phone rang and rang, we would forgive ourselves, it rang, a woman answered, "Hello?" I knew it was her, the voice had changed but the breath was the same, the spaces between the words were the same, I pressed "4, 3, 5, 5, 6," she said, "Hello?" I asked, "4, 7, 4, 8, 7, 3, 2, 5, 5, 9, 9, 6, 8,?" She said, "Your phone isn't one hundred dollars. Hello?" I wanted to reach my hand through the mouthpiece, down the line, and into her room, I wanted to reach YES, I asked, "4, 7, 4, 8, 7, 3, 2, 5, 5, 9, 9, 6, 8,?" She said, "Hello?" I told her, "4, 3, 5, 7!" "LIsten," she said, "I don't know what's wrong with your phone, but all I hear is beeps. Why don't you hang up and try again." Try again? I was trying to try again, that's what I was doing! I knew it wouldn't help, I knew no good would come of it, but I stood tehre in the middle of the airport, at the beginning of the century, at the end of my life, and I told her everything: why I'd left, where I'd gone, how I'd found out about your death, why I'd come back, and what I needed to do with the time I had left I told her because I wanted her to believe me and understand, and because I thought I owed it to her, and to myself, and to you, or was it just more selfishness? I broke my life down into letters, for love I pressed "5, 6, 8, 3," for death, "3, 3, 2, 8, 4," when the suffering is subtracted from the joy, what remains? What, I wondered is the sum of my life?" [page 269]
--
I only know how to survive the way I know how to survive. Esoteric, cold, cynical, passive. Death is just an illusion. We all truly live forever within our legacies. The time comes when we've done all we can as flesh and the rest of our purpose can only be fulfilled through remembrance and not our own furtive actions. Though our bodies may cease, our souls surely live on forever as do the memories. We have affected who we are to affect... And soon, they will tell of me posthumously... And I will down, and I will smile....
You are all so goddam wonderful.
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