This is a piece of abstract reflection, which is quite different from my other published posts. Interpret how you will, and remember that you are immeasurably larger than yourself.
Fleeting.
A word that can describe life, a trip, a lunch, a moment… interesting how the word itself has such a wide reach while it merely causes the words it describes to seem smaller.
Or perhaps the fact that the subject is fleeting is what makes it last?
New Englanders, enclosed in their speeding frosted capsules, chased by ghosts of visible exhaust in the negative temperatures. The image, even the ghost itself may be fleeting, but that chill haunts and endures.
A summer of youth embellished with a bouquet of scattered houses lining the hills along the drive to Newport, Rhode Island, emitting a fragrance of salt water and Peruvian coffee. It lasted only a day but inhabits years in my mind.
These fleeting moments are infinitesimal when written in the factual bones of description. But this is not how they live.
They are grandiose when my memory gives them breath.
We are immeasurably larger than ourselves. Our memories outlive the moments. Our inner world cannot be limited to the outer.
So those fleeting moments that we remember and look back on? Their label of “fleeting” exposes their lasting effect on the one who continues to reminisce. The tangible will fade away, but it is the feeling, the unseen, that outlasts.
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