"Some things, once you've loved them, become yours forever. And if you try to let them go, they only circle back, and return to you. They become part of who you are. Or they destroy you." 

- Allen Ginsberg, Kill Your Darlings (2014)

When I was younger, influenced by the naivety of inexperience, I used to believe time was therapeutic. That everything is made easier and palatable with patience. And pain fades away with memory, like brush strokes on vellum.

But time is neutral, and it can easily fade a memory as much as magnify it. Resolution, like the depth of an experience or a memory, is independent of how long you dwell on it. No amount of wallowing will make the pill go down easier.

In that regard, we're slaves to history. It is both what feeds our hope for sunnier times, and the nimbus that clouds our present; propelling us in the struggle and abating our potential growth.

Experience is a good mentor, but insight is the better one. We often fail to recognize that what we go through in life is rendered worthless if it doesn't educate us.

Noone comes out of grief unscathed; the scars are meant not just to deform but also to inform us. Time does not pause from its glacial procession. It is only us who choose to be still, to stagnate, in these valuable and long-gone moments.

When a clock stops ticking, its gears do not cease to exist. They're still there, needing to be rewound.

This, here, is that.





This entry is for the Round Table Challenge, and was done entirely (including the photo-graphics) on the phone with Google Keep, PhotoGrid, and Blogger for Android.