Dear T —

It’s hard to tell your own story. I know. Right now, I’m digging up the seed of my life, a lost love.

We live linearly. But at any given moment, our lives — our pasts — are both heterogeneous and multiplicitous.

In other words, beyond us and a jumble — everything connected to everything else, without beginning or end.

Today we could reassemble it one way, tomorrow another. And did any of it really happen?

I don’t mean to be a nihilist. Truth is as incontrovertible as bone. Yet quickly, even a wound becomes a dream.

Then there’s perspective:

I once was an introvert, but went so far in, I came out the other side. Now no one would believe I’m not an extrovert. Including me. Who I was is different, because I see it differently.

Have you ever felt at peace with your past, unafraid of your future, and bathed in sunlight — in every cell of your being — in the present?

Once, a friend’s kid pointed to a drainpipe and said, “penguin.” There it was: the pipe, its head; a crack, its beak; some drips, its body; more cracks, its feet.

It was a penguin and was not a penguin all at once. Am I a penguin, or not a penguin? Who decides?

Perhaps, like a painting that a painter sees before painting it, the image of myself passes through me, while I still control each stroke.

Most importantly, whoever you are and wherever you find yourself:

Have you ever felt at peace with your past, unafraid of your future, and bathed in sunlight — in every cell of your being — in the present?

I have, only once and for a moment — before dusk, in the summer crowds of London, when I walked up to Her and said, simply, “hello.”

— Ever D