Going Up

I feel like I’ve always been told or expected that growing up means taking things more seriously, but so far I feel like its just the opposite. They say I’m pretty mature and settled for my age and I feel like quickly, quickly, things are shedding their drama, their chaos, their gravity, if the three are tied together. When I was very small a day was a week and so much was full of mystery, was frightening and dizzying and wonderful/horrible to think about. And as I got older I mastered some of the basic things but still I used to go for runs around the neighborhood and find a quiet place when things built up too big inside of me, when I glimpsed the thought of taking control of my own destiny and the world and my own position within it seemed too scary. Things back then could be tragic and beautiful and I listened to soundtrack music and waited for my own epic to sweep me into things unknown, wild, and dangerous. And once because of a boy I lay on the ground and wanted to die, and some people thought I was too young to feel that way but I know this - that I am too old to feel that way now.

Even in college, as a Freshman, as a Sophomore - I infused certain things with too much drama, too much importance, and connected them in my mind with music, and when I listen to those songs now they fill me with a sort of wonder when I feel the things I felt then, and already those feelings are alien to me, feel odd, a bit silly, and I realize only now certain undertones of fear, the sense of being swept away by destiny - not any grand destiny, just ordinary life - and I think to myself that those undertones aren’t in my life today, that right now, exactly now, I have finally moved past all of that, now I know what’s up and can’t be ruffled by such things. Right.

Of course it may also be a matter of changing the object in question, tackling more difficult stages, but even if I keep moving up like this what happens when I reach the top? It can’t go on forever and it reminds me of the way deep mysteries started vanishing, mirage-like, until the end where you realize things only have this sort of gravity because people decide they do, and of course you yourself as a person included, but for a moment if you sort of step above yourself and look down and even this perspective vanishes… and there are no mysteries. Or maybe you die before things become too clear.

Anyway, I keep climbing, and thinking that I’m clear-sighted at last, because there’s so much that can only be seen in retrospect, looking back and laughing at the things that were so important, that I held onto then, sweaty palmed and desperate.