"My favorite word? What kind of a question is that?"
"A complicated one. Just answer it."
"Well if there's a cross between quixotic and metaphysics, that word."
- - -
It's not too infrequently I find myself wondering about the relativity of time and how it works. For example, I watched a movie about a true story this weekend and in the audience, as they were showing the bios of the real people the movie depicted at the end, I heard one women exclaim, "Oh! She just died!" Even though the person she was talking about had died about four years ago. Four years ago seems like an infinity to me but to this elderly women, it sounded like it was just yesterday.
- - -
"If you were going to jump off this cliff to commit suicide, which way would you want to be facing?"
"As in, would I want to be facing up, peacefully watching the sky as I plummeted to my death, or would I want to be facing down looking at the ground as I approached it? That's the most morbid thing you've ever said and/or asked."
"Would you want to be peacefully watching the sky as you plummeted to your inevitable end, or would you want to face downward watching the last seconds of your life as they ticked away?"
"Option two. There's a sort of peace in knowing the end of a story."
"In either scenario, you know the end of the story. That's not a good enough reason because you know you are going to die."
"I'd want to count the seconds up until the already-known end so that as I died, I would be so very peaceful."
- - -
It never made sense to me, in Doctor Who, when they would go back and leave the time they were in behind. Did that time just stop because they weren't there? And when they eventually did make it back, did the story line of the timeline they weren't in continue? For example, was there a timeline in which Amy never showed up for her own wedding because she disappeared that one night and never came back and then there was the matter of the reality where she did come back and did that in any way affect all the other timelines? I know that's not the way the world really works but god I wish it was and I wish that the feeling I get while listening to "Outro" by m83 was what the world was made of, I wish everything and anything was possible and the stars were cotton candy-- easily changeable, highly open to your own interpretation.
- - -
"Hey, do you see that one, that's the big dipper! And over there is the little dipper and over there is Beetlejuice. Isn't it amazing?"
"Did they name that star after the movie BeetleJuice with the creepy faced guy?"
"Of course they didn't. That's like saying, did they name all the golf courses in the world after the one we're sitting on right now?"
"That's the worst comparison I've ever heard, don't confuse her!"
"Ok fine. No, they didn't name the star after the movie because the star has existed for gazillions and gazillions of years, long before Kevin Costner existed or anyone came up with the movie Beetlejuice."
"Has the star existed for infinity?"
"As a matter of fact, it has, just like all the other stars."
"Does that mean it can't die?"
"No, because everything dies. For all we know, Beetlejuice might have already died and we just won't know until it's light goes out."
"Huh?"
"That's the beauty of the world; everything dies, but everything also lives."
- - -
The in-between is the important part, I think. In between relationships and in between schools and in between friendships and jobs and weight losses and gains and in between having babies and getting married. I think thats kind of when you find your own truths and I think those truths are the most important. They aren't the most important in the world, not by a long shot, but I think to you, they're the realest and best evidence you have that you are alive and that this world is not just a glass jar on a shelf in some alien child's room, or that our existence is not just some fictional being and that none of us have every really lived or died. Both of those scenarios could be true but if you have your own truths the scenario those truths are in doesn't have to matter and that's the beauty of it all.
- - -
"What's your favorite movie?"
"I have a few. Would you like me to try and pick?"
"No, I'd rather hear the list."
"Okay, Cloud Atlas, Beasts of the Southern Wild, and Spirited Away."
"You know how when you get to know a person really well and then when they do certain things, it's just so typical of and specific to them, it makes you smile at their existence."
"Yes, I do."
"Good, because it's important to remember that existence is important."
- - -
In the end, I know almost none of you are going to know what I'm trying to convey with this but that's not the point. The point is that I wrote these words and they mean something to me and I think that's all I could ever really ask for.
- - -
"I'm the king of my own land.
Facing tempests of dust, I'll fight till the end,
Creatures of my dreams raise up and dance with me!
Now and forever, I'm your king."
