Scenery

It's strange isn't it, how we float along through time one year, one month, one day at a time. We create these markers and designate a number value so we can tick off the days.

Nature itself doesn't count the years, only season and those are entirely circular so you find yourself back where you started before long. Our time counters give us a sense of progression, a sense of forward movement like floating down a river. It may be January again, but this is the first time it has ever been January of 2011.

The strangest thing to me is that as I float down this river of time the scenery continues to change and morph; sometime it's so subtle-- a new friend here, a trip there, and sometime it's so drastic that even the very laws of reality seem to be in question-- is up actually down? Am I breathing water instead of air?

And suddenly I realize that the friends I have now I didn't even know existed five years ago and the friend I had ten years ago, that I couldn't imagine life without, have drifted away across the water and I can hardly make out their form or remember their voice.

And I get a panicky feeling when I think that maybe ten years from now I wont know any of my current friends. What if they're just distant memories? Who will my friends be then?

Which makes looking forward into the future such an interesting endeavor because we simply cannot imagine what may be around the corner.

Some things are certain, like winter and rain and hunger and laughter. And things we may think are certain are much less so than we realize. And still other things may blindside us completely and we'll be unexpectedly joyful about it... or completely devastated (but I prefer not to think about that one).

I don't know why I'm in such a ponder-y mood. It may have something to do with the realization that I have not only entered a new season of life but I've been living it for the past five months.

The scenery around me has changed and I'm just catching on.