People grow, yes of course but…do they change? Fundamentally I mean. A son of Hamas crossing over to the Mosaad is romantic, and predictable. A mantra can be changed but, not a soccer team.
Do the habits of life change? Those things that make your life distinctly yours. Pathology…hard-wiring. I mean when you lose all your memories, hallowed wealth of all your over glorified experiences…what remains, is it a constant? Is there a subsisting feeling that we are the same person always? Predictable. Do our souls have signatures? How would you know what to carry to a desert? A bottle of mineral water and a Bible…am religious only at weddings and funerals. I’ve never been to a wedding. One burial.
I ask only because I find myself abhorrently flippant about things. Small things like coffee or tea to big things like money…or meaning. Is who we are something as casual as destiny or is it organic, susceptible to everyday whims.
At twenty-two, the most priceless thing I own is my life, still. In the morning when I wake up I cling to it but as the day spends…it matters less. Jazz to rock, Ella Fitzgerald any day to the Sex Pistols. Vanilla to Chocolate. Thomas Hardy to any sort of objective reality…
If we change, and everything changes, what keeps?
Begin with an individual and before you know it, you’ll find that you’ve created a type- Fitzgerald, not the singer. Do clichés, stereotypes apply?
I don’t believe in blanket statements, organised religion, translated poetry or in death. I believe in the unattainables. True love, perfect happiness or at least moments of it, world peace, trickle-down economy…you know, the ones that people feel ungrudgingly charitable about. They are willing to believe it for others but not themselves.
I don’t believe in simplicity either. As a style of fashion, a dress sense…yes but not as a principle for living. I don’t believe that life is simplistic. I don’t believe that anything in life is simplistic. Just think, today a planet might roll off into space, a prince might marry a waitress. It takes ‘surprise and wild connections’ doesn’t it.
And I want something from life. It was promised to me long ago. Am not sure what it is yet but it’s out there in the world, floating around in the stars. Shapeless, nameless and undefined but sometimes I feel that the Sun knows it, and the and the leaves outside my window. And they feel me moving.
Are these the necessities of my nature? Does everyone have these compulsions, inclinations, leanings that are distinct, seamless, yours.
Do you know enough about yourself to say that you would be that self if you had been born say, to a different social class, height range, skin colour, gender, body type? White and charmed, rich and disaffected, leggy, an overweight child with abandonment issues.
You have you own thumb print, custom made quirky ears. But are you distinct? Would you be the person that you are in a tsunami? In Mars? Would you be that person when no one was looking. Do you know your face enough to point it out of a crowd? I don’t think I know enough about the world to comment on its affairs. I like tea though. I like my tea leaves at the bottom of my cup.
