Bodies of the Dead
or, Given Pause
The remains of something sacred, something dear.

It was the Thesaurus that caught my eye; on the ground with its pages rainsoaked and curling to the sky. About waist high, on the raised ledge separating sidewalk and lawn lay the waterlogged remains of miscellaneous things, a discarded pile of rubbish in the bushes on the corner of 21st and Harris.

I was walking to campus in twilight's darkest hour, when perspective is all wrong and the world is a dim sepia. To me, this is always been a time when nothing is real. I don't know why the "junk" caught my eye but it was enough to get me to stop on my way to get a good seat for Cyberpunk. I noticed the handle of some tool sticking out of the pile, and pulled out a small trowel from under some socks and rags. I used it to uncover two other ruined books, something on winter and a book of poetry. Somehow the Thesaurus had fallen from the ledge where the other things lay in a heap. The rest of the trove was too random and strange for me to wrap my mind around. It struck me as somehow both nostalgic and bizarre. What was it doing there, discarded in the rain? It didn't look like garbage or the contents of a bookbag. In either case, the shrubbery around a residential lawn seemed a strange graveyard for trinkets... and perfectly good books gone to waste.

I walked on.

Nostalgia. Why does it grip me so often, now? What changes come upon me?

Again, we watched an anime that's probably more of a religion than anything else. It certainly wasn't written for its entertainment value. But Lain makes a good point. Several, in fact. We are only our memories. We are only the memories of others. In the end, we are not our bodies. We don't exist if we are not remembered. But...

Memories aren't just the past, are they? They are now; they are the future.

If this is true, and the only way we exist is in each other's memories, what are we living for? Human beings have ALWAYS strove (striven?) (strived?) to be immortalized... but that can't be the only meaning behind existence. If I live just to be remembered, why do I search for myself? My inner self that I seek to find will not be what is remembered, it will pass away and will mean nothing except to me during the brief spark that is my existence. But for me to give up this search makes MY existence superficial. For me to strive to make an impression on others just so they'll remember me is fruitless and trite. Where is the balance? Just hoping to succeed in finding self and making an impression simultaneously? It seems to me that this would only result in being remembered as selfish and ultimately forgotten? Who are the remembered people, then? Not the people who TRY to be remembered, but those who seem selfless. Do they seem selfless because they don't seek the self? This can't be... they must seem selfless because they have found theirselves and have moved on to greater things. Art, music, mathematics, benevolence. This is transcendence. I don't suppose you can force an impression, after all.

Then what am I? Certainly no smiling Buddha... perhaps a goddess of destruction? Perhaps a mother, a future womb? No. I am still just a girl... I am still looking.

Regardless, remembered or forgotten, we are all conencted. I will live on in something other than memory. Other than the line of my family. I will live on in the energy of my encounters with others. Forgotten in all but essence, we live on in how we turn the split seconds of each other's lives. In this way, my child will know your child if I have met you only in passing. In this way, your acquaintance meets me when he meets you.

This is why, when I say "don't tell me about it," it doesn't mean I don't want to hear. I'd rather meet the people in your life through the way they change you. I can see it in your eyes when something changes... that is all the introduction I need.

I returned home in the dark. The rain had stopped and the sky cleared in a circle above me. It's beginning to get warmer at night. I hope spring comes soon. A time for rebirth...

I am glad for the people I have met, for the awkward positions I put myself in. I still wish I could rewrite certain lines. I still wish for an idyllic past, for a shining future. I still want to be remembered. I still wish my life had a soundtrack. But I guess I'll settle for what I've got.

And I won't question any less.

Annotations:
- Today I tried to take a nap. When I lay down, the phone rang. When I'd just fallen asleep, the phone rang again. It was f*cking Discover Card. I will murder them, I swear to god. 20 minutes later, Reilly came home and turned on his radio. Loud. So much for that nap.
-Good News: Murray-san is getting Bebop on DvD! Who gots the HOOK-UPs??