27

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

There is very little, and then very much, about growing up, and growing old. At the end of 26 years, the one thing I've learnt is the value of persistence.

The persistence of time, of dreams, of hope, of love.

A year, then another, then another. I'd stopped celebrating my birthday at 21. Or so I thought. This year and another, a vague and futile effort to try and make a day special. Just because. Commemorating the turn of another year, the hope of all things new, the dream of stepping closer to where I'd want to be, the belief that having someone special by your side makes things somehow better, despite being miles away from...

So I went up the wheel I'd sworn off 8 years ago - the persistence of time/
I finally got the one gift I've been waiting for - the persistence of dreams/
I found myself a dream job (although I didn't apply) and convinced myself that I'm moving closer - the persistence of hope/
And I baked myself my own birthday cake - an Oreo cheesecake, proving to myself that I could actually bake without much assistance - the persistence of love.

Each year I try to coop myself up in silence and think deep thoughts. I didn't end up doing it this year. But I did manage to get my deep thought of the year:

The risk of realising your dreams too early is that you stop knowing what to do for the rest of your life.

Be careful what you wish for.

onestringbag

Just when I am trying to eliminate plastic bag in my frenetic response to the 10p tax law proposed and withdrawn, I was shopping at the supermarket the other day wondering about the even more excessive number of plastic bags that turn up from weighing fruit and vegs.

Those bags are even worse than plastic carrier bags, they're not recyclable, and are too small to be of any reuse value. Just as I thought that there must be one smart person out there who had figured out how to avoid using those bags - onestringbag appeared.

The one smart person who designed and created the onestringbag for grocery shopping happened also to shop at my beloved Victoria Market, and lives in one of my favourite cities. She's even now got the onestringbag open sourced so you can make them yourself using instructables - and in case you don't want to go through the trouble, you can buy them too.

Seven and Twenty-Seven / time like memory

[memory] is what happened.
[memory] is a poem i once wrote.
[memory] is a poem that then writes me.

and visceral fantasy / dwelling in the reality of previous / our former selves staring at us / some dead, some forgotten, some writing love letters / "to your ego at twenty-four" / who says we can only give advice to our children / we can write letters to our future selves / if we would heed them when the time comes anyway / advice is cheap (and forgotten) no matter by whom / knowing my foibles, i don't think i'd take myself any more seriously at seven than twenty-seven / i'd look back and laugh at my naive insanity all the same.

funny though, how we haven't words for future besides future / but we have adjectives, nouns, verbs for what has come before / previous, former, past, ago; future, future, future, future / frevious, perhaps, fast is taken, the verb 'will be' / funny how 'will' suggests determinism sometimes / not everyone would agree we have a choice.

i am obsessed with time and the notion of clocks / tiny time pieces ticking destiny in regular motion / i didn't think time slipped by in seconds but we need some way of counting i suppose / like a metronome keeping rhythm when the fact is i am out of tune. / did you think we'd need a watch other than to meet the time to meet each other by? / these days i take to meeting you whenever / a location and an uncertain hour (you are always late anyway) / and if you are meant to be there then perhaps you will be / (and i will break up with whoever i unfortunately never managed to meet). / these days, late means time has passed and i learn to expect you two minutes after / and late to me becomes the endless waiting for someone who will never then arrive / a truly late. and perhaps then "the late mr darcy" takes on more significance than someone who is simply held up by traffic.

i just got myself a watch. / and not just a watch. / a very expensive watch / a watch that i'd wanted since i was 17.

it was the gift i'd rejected at 18, yearned for at 21, and finally got - at 27. i'd gotten it to honour a memory, and as memory-serves, memory now honours me. it's the same memory, only different - mirror imaged. the giver and not the given reversed.

do you wonder if you would know if something you've been waiting for has arrived? when the moment steals by, unspoken, unknown, unannounced?

lately i've been staring at shadows.