a regular pair of pants

Time is not actually passing, anymore than space is passing. The vastness of space doesn’t negate the existence of tiny people on a tiny planet, and the vastness of time is no different. Death is a concept invented by culture, an abstraction that, by its nature, no one actually experiences. Things I miss in here, with a pleasant, aching clarity: the smell of dirt, a breeze. A girl’s hair when she rests her head between my chest and shoulder, a regular pair of pants, drinking and listening to music in a friend’s kitchen. Someone yelling “whore” in mock frustration. Driving a moped over a city bridge, standing outside a restaurant after a meal, sitting by a lake, feeling the sun as the seasons start to change, leaning down in a car at night so that you can only see streetlights gliding by. Putting on a ton of high tech clothes to go wade through knee-deep snow, swimming underwater, getting off work, drinking coffee in a shitty diner, people talking. But maybe I usually miss these things. Other people whose lives most be a bit like this all the time: prisoners, soldiers on a submarine, night shift security guards, My desire to be a famous weirdo is diminished somewhat, losing leverage to the desire just to be present. The vacuum I’ve created in here is a lens to see my life, an upside-down glass bottom boat in time. I am floating below all moments because all moments are the present. I am drifting underwater in silence, looking up, waiting to surface.