I wander above the sea of fog and life.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” [Steve Jobs, Stanford University 2005]

I don’t think there’s such a thing in the world as “being stuck” doing whatever it is you don’t want to do. Why? Because there’s always a choice not to. And I’m not talking about picking between suffering through a salad or snarfing a burger or even if you want to go clubbing on a Thursday night or not. Those are easy! I’m talking about the bigger things like what the fuck you want to do with your life.

Most people would rather stick to what they know like taking a college course that would get them into a good company…even if they’d rather do poetry all their life. Some survive, some don’t and then they claim to be stuck. And they spend a lifetime being stuck and bitter about the many things they weren’t able to do then they die. 

Today I just learned that to be truly human, we must die. And that awareness on our own mortality is our drive to do what we want to do (and that’s not the typical teenage shit teenagers usually say). One day, I, you, they will be all gone from this world. And it’s shit to know that until death, nothing meaningful has taken place. Just because you were stuck.

Staring at a blank piece of paper is like staring at life itself. There is just too many things you can do to it, you don’t even know where to start. But somehow you do and you just keep going, pausing once in a while, only to continue where you left off or take a new direction. And at the end of the day, when the paper has completed (or not completed) its purpose, it ends and life ends.

Then you get a new piece of paper. 

“Excuse me, I was asked to inform you that your professor is not coming today.” (Guy sent by our professor to inform us of his absence)

And that was after my friends forced me to go to class.

For the lack of suitable boxes, I had plastic bags, littering my floor. They contained everything I own and my memories from a few years back. I always thought that on the day we’d say goodbye to our old house, I’d be bringing with me boxes of the child who grew up there. Baby photos, sacred toys, the secret of adolescent love and the faltering steps of an undergrad. But all I had left were memories of that afternoon. The muddy river that used to be an avenue with people swirling by as wet and tired hands gripped a rope that fought the current. The night was no better.

That was nearly three years ago. So despite the drama, life goes on. Materialism doesn’t last as long as sentimentality. And nothing beats the joy of being alive and ever-changing. 

My mother gave me spaghetti for lunch. She put a large serving in a small tupperware and told me not to forget it on my way out. That was nice of her, I thought. Small gestures make huge impacts. And all we have in return is gratefulness…but even that we sometimes forget to give.

The Past
Ralph Waldo Emerson 

The debt is paid,
The verdict said,
The Furies laid,
The plague is stayed,
All fortunes made;
Turn the key and bolt the door,
Sweet death is forevermore.
Nor haughty hope, nor swart chagrin,
Nor murdering hate, can enter in.
All is now secure and fast;
Not the gods can shake the past;
Flies-to the adamantine door
Bolted down forevermore.
None can re-enter there—
No thef so politic,
No Satan with a royal trick
Steal in by window, chink, or hole,
To bind or unbind, add what lacked,
Insert a leaf, or forge a name,
New-face or finish what is packed,
Alter or mend eternal fact. 

I’m going to the eat you alive with my sarcasm and wit.