To go ahead and not look back

It's 1234 o clock! Aaaaand.............................now it it's not. That's right, I just typed in ellipses until the minute changed. Better uses of time? I think not.

Change is strange. You can change and in the process of changing, not even notice the differences until you compare with the past. Then it's like you suddenly wake up and realize that you have become different. The feeling is kind of scary actually to know that you, the person you should know the best, can become a stranger to the previous you while you think nothing has changed. It kind of ties into that one quotation by Ranier Maria Rilke (whose name reminds me alternatively of cherries, men with female names, and something german) that goes roughly, just live your way into the answer. Every moment in the past was a now. That's why the change climbs upon you, because in the slice of the past that is the present, you aren't comparing.

Same with being at home. Going through all the stuff I drew, things I wrote, the debris of programs I attended, paper trails of a past. I found the blueprint I drew for a model house that I made in architecture camp, and was amazed by how at one point I somehow made the outlines of a building and then constructed it. Don't know how to do that anymore.

I guess that's why I like to read old things. Notes from friends in high school (the ones with inside jokes that are out of context and due to my shittastic memory, unable to be put into context, are funny and perplexing), emails, even chats. Without technology, such time-capsuling would be difficult so there's a check for technology in my pro/con list. I guess it could be argued that this behavior is not very pro-active or helfpul, since people change and inevitably you and whomever you were communicating with at that time are now completely different people with a different relationship so you run the risk of pessimistic nostalgia. But I think if you can learn something from these time capsules, then it's useful. If nothing else, if it can slide your perception out of this now and into the comparison of a past now, then it has been useful. To see the change you've gathered is useful, and stunning.

It's weird, I feel like now I remember who I am. And that's a good feeling.