Realized the only reason I exist is to be a vessel for time to move through me the same way wind moves through trees and takes down leaves, same way knives go through butter, same way tobacco smoke goes through my lungs. Time became so thick it started to drown me and I couldn’t see anything but time everywhere, flowing like a river from the present to the past (the future does not exist, but the past certainly does… it’s the high-water mark of energy twisting backwards, leaving its scars on everything it licks) and seconds were thin blue wires that sliced through me and came out the other side, glowing red like taillights, bye bye, going far and away and never turning back. The past was this blistering crest pushing me forward and was neither good nor bad but simply “was” and it would always push me forward, a kind of Rube Goldberg machine that had been set in motion the moment my father’s spermatozoon scraped its way into my mother’s ovaries and it would never end and I would never be able to control the direction this wave spun, but that didn’t matter. It simply was. And that’s why I’m here today.
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I died (briefly) and got a taste of what it’ll be like being nothing but dispersed matter (sure, going to Heaven, whatever) and I knew what it felt like to have everyone talking at my funeral but then I snapped out of it and realized no one was talking about me at all (why should they be?) and there were Talking Heads videos on the VHS player and I didn’t miss you.