Closing the Year

What is this speck of consciousness that floats on the day? I’ve been asking myself this question since the age of five. I remember clearly riding in the back of my mother’s green station wagon. We were on Monterrey Blvd heading home. My hair was short and I had bangs. Why am I me and not someone else? Why do I live now and not some time other, either past or future? And why now, this memory so clear, clearly true and not true? I remember the question, of asking it. I remember the memory of remembering myself in the back of the station wagon at the time of asking. Yet, we didn’t move to that part of town until I was ten. So age, location and memory don’t match. But as I look out my westward window now, into a sea of trees and a setting sun, I can only think of the smallness of my existence and the magnitude of (everything else.)

Happy New Year. May you hold and be held. May your dreams come true.