Assorted musings from my journal, shortened and reworded for consistency.
Sometimes when I count the people in the room so I can set the right number of places at the table, I forget to count myself.
Sometimes it seems hard to believe how my cat can hear me say “Get up” all the time and still not understand what it means.
Sometimes when I switch my bag from one shoulder to the other while talking on the phone, I am struck by the hundreds of intricate, coordinated, proprioceptive movements it takes to do it seamlessly, and I think for a moment that the body and brain are a miracle.
Sometimes when I look at a spider standing on the window I wonder what the world seems like from her perspective and I’m moved to think of the trillions of pinpricks of consciousness, of individual awareness to one degree or another that have come and gone in the lifetime of our Earth.
Sometimes I eat too much and feel acutely terrible and think to myself, surely this time I will remember, and never do it again, and then I do it again and I think how sad it is that we forget things.
Sometimes I see a petite woman standing on the train and I wonder if it is harder to stay standing up with such tiny feet.
Sometimes I wonder why sad things never make me cry but kindness does.
Sometimes I wonder if there’s anything better to be than human.
Sometimes I remember when it felt strange to say “my fiancé” and then later to say “my wife” and I feel a little wistful.
Sometimes I wonder why people say they want to find themselves when losing yourself in what you love is so much better.
Sometimes I read an old book that moves me deeply and it feels strange and even sad to think that it existed all my life but I didn’t know it yet.
Sometimes I look at the clouds in the sky and think even though they’re constantly in flux, maybe they’re the only thing on earth that really never changes, that a billion years ago, before animals and plants, before the landscape was recycled over and over, there may have been white puffy clouds in a blue sky, and this makes me happy.
Sometimes I imagine that absolutely anything would flow like water if you had a big enough pile of it.
Sometimes I fall in love in a dream and wake up devastated.
Sometimes I imagine the first man must have thought autumn was the end of the world and despaired not knowing of spring.
Sometimes I think the only difference between a great poem and a good poem is that the people who judge greatness are afraid the author of the great poem knows more than they do.
Sometimes I think familiarity is the mind’s defense against what would otherwise be a crippling wonder at all we experience.
Sometimes I think the reason people always look outside when it rains is that it surprises us to be reminded there is an “up” real enough to drop things on us, when we spend so much time looking down.
Sometimes I think God made man from Earth, Angels from wind, and Devils from fire, and I wonder what he made from water.
Sometimes I think it’s crazy to feel an affinity for one small portion of the surface of the earth, but I still love home, my mountains, my trees, even my streets.
Sometimes I think a streetlight is bright because it completely washes away the feeble shadow I cast on the street in the moonlight, and then I remember the moon is 230 thousand miles away and only darkly reflecting the hidden sun.
Sometimes I think man became jealous of birds and that’s why he invented music, as if to say “I too can…”
Sometimes I think when we say animals live in harmony with nature what we really mean is they accept the inherent suffering of scarcity without complaint, as if the idealized state is to not even cry out in the darkness.
Sometimes I think we understand each other in the same way we know the words to a song: we can’t recite them no matter how hard we try but we always know the right word when the time comes.