EvAlUtIoN
or
PoSt I-JuSt-ScReWeD-My-MaThS-PaPeR-CuM-I-DoN't-KnOw-HoW-ThE-HeLl-To-DeScRiBe-ThIs-EmOtIoN SyNdRoMe
by .:ning:.

An individual's psyche never quite stays the same. The Multiple Personality Ripples theory is a good way to summarize it (stole idea from Norma Fox Mazer, sorry)... bobbing between optimism and pessimism, fatalism and I-can-change-the-world-ism, etc. Mixed emotions can attack a person all at once and you realise they can't really be defined (kind of like determining social factors, political factors or socio-political factors, to quote ol' Fifi Tan). I experience this every time I step into school for any period of time (be it short or long run). Maybe it's just an ingrained fear of change that one unconsciously tries to get past - but why, anyway? So that people, events, things... hurt you less. Does it work? Sometimes. It helped when tucking SC away in earlier pages of my diary to move on to something new. Always the "things have to change" mindset that makes a person apparently Responsible and Mature. But it helps less and less when I realise I drink in every second of life as it passes by to remember in waking dreams. Every miniscule detail is precious - be it the socks I wore or how the sunlight-fused air smelt. The weather, the mood - or anything at all.
It's unfortunate that pain also comes along with the whole package.
Kodak moment - in New Zealand last year at a bungee jumping site. The wind was whipping everyone's hats off and pulling the temperature steadily downwards - so cold my fingers were ready to drop off the moment they defrosted. My mum insisted on buying gloves at the little shop next to the bridge those extremists were paying to jump off of, although we were gonna be at that place for like, fifteen minutes tops? Always a backup plan, no matter the cost. Han and I preferred the stick-hands-in-coat-pockets-the-whole-time idea, but surrended. (Okay, contradictory to the previous entry, my mum IS persuasive when she wants to be, either that or you just gotta AGREE or you'd never hear the end of it.) I was fascinated (and horrified, I admit) to see how each customer dangled uselessly in mid-air, suspended over this huge expanse of water (the lake under the bridge... obviously) after completing each death-defying jump, like a Munchkin on the end of a taut rubber band. How he or she had to hang upside-down until the team managed to position their boat just underneath and unbuckle them.
This kid in my tour group - he was around twelve, maybe - wanted to give it a shot, no questions asked.
How would you feel, treading on that barrier between the laytie and transcending sphere? Or do you believe it's invisible?
Maybe that's my problem - it's always been too clearly marked out. "Don't step there." "Don't do that." "Don't touch it - you'll die a thousand deaths." Yet the valiant only taste of death but once. (Yes, Julius Caesar.) That would certainly explain the friggin' reef knot tying and untying itself somewhere in my stomach every time a Ripple sets changes in motion.
I need to remember to dance... and dance whenever the music plays, but to stop... when it stops. That being said, has this set of feet completed even one song yet?
Unattainably... the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
That being said, Sloman, Tarling and Shakespeare await.