Time passages

Sometimes, it all feels new. I look around, as if taking in the changes around me all at once, and the shock feels like the backfire of a powerful rifle. My shoulders are strong enough to bear that now, and yet sometimes, I long for the fragility of childhood and adolescence. Sometimes, I wish I could turn back the clock to years and years ago. Sweet seem those times now, and I do not know if that is a tint bestowed upon my past by nostalgia, or if it is the bittersweet dregs of that drink that constitutes adulthood. I look at my aging parents withering away, and sometimes I cannot stand to see it. I would give away all my youth in exchange to see them as they once were, strong and capable, cheerful and resilient. But such is the carnage of time, one's youth is traded away for another's, and who am I to question what is inevitable? I look at this house that I have inhabited for the better part of two decades now, and the visuals that come to my mind are as fragrant as the jasmine creeper that used to grow along the gate once upon a time. But the iron of that gate is now coated thick with rust, just as my memories are with sepia.

My future is a land unknown, gleaming with magic and infinite possibilities and humongous dragons. My past is a fragrant wood worn fine by scars, all the more magnificent for its endurance. I stand at the present, the place where both these intersect and confront me like a two headed God with a mocking chant: Which way do you want to go? The choice is impossible, because I cannot let go of the things that have defined me, nor can I live in their shadow forever. I choose to live instead in that thin slice of time which feels static, benumbing me to the fact that things are changing, making time seem like one fluid stream of sparkling water.

Occasionally though, I get caught up in these time passages, and my ruminations all seem to culminate in the point that the future always takes something away from the past. And that is the fundamental law of nature. Change.

P.S: Not that I hate change. There are times when I look forward to it, and then again, times when I am governed by inertia, just as every human being is.:)