Friday, September 30, 2011

Day 365: Coming Home

OYLPA Day 365: Coming Home by klodhie
OYLPA Day 365: Coming Home, a photo by klodhie on Flickr.
Fri., Sept. 30, 2011

As I sit against this fabric seat, head tilting to look out the window, I see the place I've called home for so long once again. The wide expanse of lit-up Los Angeles spreads out into the night, shimmering rivers of twinkling lights. I blink and imagine that all that darkness below is the deep deep ocean, and all those lights are each ships out at sea; and how many people are on each ship, I wonder? Where are they heading, these ants of industry and sleeplessness?

I blink again and the ships are gone, and once again return those planned grids that make up all of L.A. As I sit here I think of many things, not the least of which is the fact that exactly one year ago, I embarked on this silly blog-of-a-journey, and how annoyingly fitting it is that on the last day, I literally arrive home again, so that even the last day mocks me and says, "It is laughable, this silly irony you call life."

And this irony indeed seems to be following me everywhere these days, run from it though I may. Yet even as I run, I smile, too, because it is life, and that is all we have. I come home today because a dear friend weds her best friend this week, and I come home too because this same week my uncle lies in a hospital bed, hanging in that misty space between breath and the clouds.

We cannot know our fate, strive as we might. Would you care to know yours? I would not. I'd rather live each day as it comes, tackle it as need be, celebrate it as fitting and desirable. Making meaning out of every slot of this year has been no easy task - I hated it many, many times, especially toward the end, when it became impossible, in fact. Impelled to find meaning in something each day, I must admit, led me to seek adventures I would not have otherwise sought, speak to people I would otherwise have ignored in timidity, captured moments I would otherwise have forgotten amongst countless others.

And so I wonder, perhaps, if what I am supposed to learn from all this, is simply that in order for us to see the meaning in anything, we must make it for ourselves?

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