midnight melted to morning

a moment faded to memory

after all the remembering last night. after getting home at 6 in the morning. after sleeping until 5 in the afternoon. i spent the last three hours reading through some of my high school diaries- july 8, 2004 to november 9, 2006. four diaries in two years, one of which was filled up in two months. i used to write so much. my current diary? june 7, 2007 to.. well, you can fill in the blanks because clearly, i'm not. and i guess it's discouraging but i think i've figured out why i don't write anymore. somewhere along the way, i realized that i can't fit my whole life into my diary. i can stick in as many ticket stubs and boarding passes or copy in as many text messages (and believe me, i've copied in a lot) as i want. i can record the exact length of phone calls and video chats and capture the anxiety and anticipation before and the satisfaction or frustration or giddyness afterward. i can print out photos and emails and blog entries and painstakingly glue them all in. but to what end? it'll never be enough- not nearly. there are so many shades of emotions in the heat of moments and even in stillness, nuances and voice inflections and silences and whispered sentiments and sound effects that can't just be printed out and glued onto a page- words, hours worth of words, start slipping away here and there before the conversation is even over. glances and eyes rolled and eyebrows raised, shy smiles and smells and inexplicable brushes of fingertips, silent wishes and hasty prayers and acts of deliberation and words, words, words- more words than i could ever write.

so why write them? just to say i was here? that this is my moment- the finished bowl of watermelon on my right, the saran-wrap untidily peeled away, scrunched, perched on one edge of the bowl, the fork lying diagonally in it, my right leg propped up on the same corner of the table, my calf touching the bowl, i'm incomplete and i'm undone, but i suppose like everyone, there's so much more that's going on, behind the scenes, the microwave in the kitchen down the hall just 'ding'ed, my tigger cell phone silenced, my elmo bag in a heap on the scanner. but there's so much more. there are thoughts racing through my mind beyond the ones i'm typing out. my heart is murmuring all sorts of unintelligible emotions. there are files in my recycling bin that i haven't gotten around to 'move to trash.' if even a simple still moment like this one can't be captured, no other moment stands a chance.

this is my moment, my simple still moment. it's not yours and it'll never be mine again- no amount of words or diagrams could make it either of ours. you have your own moment and even if i could paint a perfect picture of my moment for you to relive, by engaging it you'll lose yours. so i'll live my moment and you'll live yours. and we'll love the time we have because that's really all we can ever do.

running through yesterday into tomorrow
don’t let it just drift away
forget about tying the hands of time
give every minute to the One who gave us today
- joy williams