Half-finished projects lie in haphazard heaps around me. I remember reading some sort of horoscope or introspection to my character at some point, years ago, that happened to hit the nail on the head when it proposed that every project or creative outlet was a 'silver lure', and that I tend to flit from one to the other like an overindulged fish.
On nights like this I can't seem to sit still. I have time (in theory) to do whatever I wish, and I feel a creative itch inching its way up my spine. I want to draw, or maybe read a good book, or a comic, anything I can apply my life to while simultaneously escaping from it. (This is, I suspect, the main reason role-play holds such a fascination for me.) But I settle on nothing. I spread beads and hemp around me and make half a necklace before turning my attention again to the internet, browsing through my bookmarks for what has to be the tenth time today, hoping something new will appear and teach me something.
Facebook is a wonderful source of information for the information-starved, and I find myself looking through some photos. Pictures of faces I don't know, faces that I'll never see again, and faces I know so well it's surprising to realize I haven't seen them recently-- months, even.
I forget a lot of things. Ask anyone. It's a trademark, really. No matter how carefully I pack or plan or double check, I always manage to forget some vital object or piece of information. I've left my present for a friend's birthday at my house, forgotten the power cord for my computer in the transition from college to home, and sometimes I look at things around me and wonder if I've forgotten parts of myself-- parts of my past. If you want to be nice, you could say I live in the present, enjoying life as it comes, and not dwelling on what came before. But if you want to perhaps be more truthful, you could say I'm fickle, air-headed, a finger in each pot of paint, so to speak.
It's so strange-- I've known someone for years and years and memorized their face, then in a matter of a few months I feel like I've forgotten it and am just now remembering what it looks like. Memories of years past flood in. I've been so busy and distracted chasing other lures in life and I'm just coming back to this one.
As I was walking back from class today I thought about who and where I was a year ago, and how much has changed. The friends who have come, and the ones who've gone. Relationships I've built or let be ground away by the heels of time. Things I've done, things I've regretted, reasons I've cried, reasons I've laughed until I cried. I've never kept a journal, but things like this make me wish I had. I was looking through pictures someone I vaguely know had uploaded, pictures of her and her friend that I vaguely know that died less than a month ago. Pictures of normal moments among friends, and I found myself staring at the girl's face with the realization that she is simply gone, and will never smile for a photo with her friends anymore.
It seems a recurring theme in conversations and my thoughts recently: time does not rule us. Our choices are ours alone, opportunities ours to take. Every moment is one we don't get back, it cannot be repeated, it is there and then gone.
I have a song on a playlist of mine to remind me of this:
"We are not infinite
We are not permanent
Nothing is immediate"
It's a good lesson to remember.
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