I do not doubt that we are all capable of learning to freeze.  Or starve to death, for that matter.  Death will not be a stranger for any, for long.

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There are reasons we are constituted in uncertainty.

We are able to learn.

Everyone will.

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It’s why I told her how much I trusted her.  To change.  And therefore never knew anything, asking so many questions, again and then again, about plans.  Who knew when?  or then?  or now?  I said.  Things fluctuate as they die.

Or I never knew.  Having so little to do with facts or truth, beliefs or trust.  IS is always something else.  Or here is always different.  NOW has never been, in other words.  Even if the words are the same.

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And. So. On.

Apparently.

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There is music.  And recognition – recognizability – (memory?) – a passion for pattern, a shine to similar, a longing for location, locatability.  For what it’s worth – a pronounced inaccuracy and pro-found nostalgia.  As the ‘similar’ is founded on what’s been experienced before (pro-found), and at least less than (or more?) than present.  Pre-sent?  NOW was given / sent before?  I doubt that… but feel wary that that’s all we’ll ever know, never quite catching up to being.

In another sense: the inherent lag of perception.  How old (again, pre-supposedly) are the stars we ‘see’?  Or the squirrel on yonder branch; your eyes across the table; our held hands… by the time they register?

What happens, “now”?  And why are we occupied with what we call “next” when we can’t even exist at once’s occurring?  Seeking a head start?  A virtual or imagined pre-sent?

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Yes I heard what you said…after you’d said it.

There’s our “now.”

The cut from stepping on glass… and then the pain… later.

The bite of food, licks of flesh, kisses… and then the tasting.

The breeze and then the leaf, light and then its outline.  Mostly shadow.

“Hello,” I reply in turn, but your head already bowed and path resumed, on the far sidewalk.

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I fall behind.

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Suppose this is why, in conversation, ever losing our way in delay, we ask “where were we?” rather than “where are we?”  What is it we wish to know?  Where do we hope to be with one another?

As I was saying – with requisite gap between whatever may have been transpiring in my ‘mind’ (or whereverywhere thinking occurs) and the sludgy musculature, instruments, and carefully crafted formulation of alphabetic symbols to display attempts of communication or composures…

…now I’ve forgotten…