I had a great day today. And like many of the days I deem good, I spend the tail end of this one thinking of the worst things. I've spoken to a few of my friends about this... and they don't think as I do, don't do as I do. I'm different. I rarely like to say things like that... only because they might be construed as self-congratulatory. But I don't think of specific facets of my character as being especially being good or especially bad... not most of the time anyway. Sometimes different is just different; there's no subtext. The stories are all the same, I've said and thought this many, many times. It's all the same and yet always different. Sometimes it just... your voice can sound so different that you believe you're redefining the concept of song...
Back to what I was getting at... good days and bad days. I can conjure up a really great day. I have it in my mind. And a funny thing happened that night as I was leaving the restaurant, I caught sight of someone having the worst night. It's funny because whether I had seen that person and his family or not, I still would have thought of them. Of course I wouldn't have thought about them specifically... but the idea of them is always there.
It comes easily when I catch sight of a great landscape, a panorama. I see the cars, I see the houses, I see the cities, the streets... everything bustling with people. People like and unlike me, running about their days. And what's happening to me? What's happening to them? I have these views and I pretend to see inside houses. I wonder... who's dying, who's being born? Who's making love, being raped? Who's being embraced, being beaten? Who's flourishing, breaking? So many stories are being played out, so many dramas. So many. I'm on the side of a mountain, over a bridge, on a street atop a hill and I see these things... all these stories happening all at the same time.
It's the idea that days and memories can exist as two diametrically opposed forces in the minds and hearts of two people. I have a great day and get struck with the idea that it doesn't exist for everyone as it does for me. This beauty exists as a horror somewhere else and it will continue to live on as such forever because I still remember that night... one of the very best, filled with such happiness that I thought I would explode... and crossing paths with a man dying in a parking lot. I remember his family circled around him and sobbing. I kept thinking of what would happen next, for me and for him. How different will this day turn out for us? What will we take away from this night? It's always there... these thoughts. Always with the best of days come the worst of thoughts.
Ultimately it's about compassion and empathy. Getting totally lost in one thing, however dark or light, is a selfish and, some might argue, empty experience. I don't mind these thoughts if carrying the memory of them means harboring these feelings of deference, empathy and compassion for all those who can't share in my bliss. Carrying them within might result in their bleeding out; making the fantasy a reality... a world in which we all endeavor to share in our bliss.
DS333, honored.
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