This poem was inspired from conversations with my friend, Tariel. The poem illustrates two paradoxes: one paradox is that in order to deal with and manage death and loss, you must take it "lightly" and "ephemerally." But my ultimate pursuit of life is to live beyond my own life. I want to become a fossil that will be preserved for a million gazillion years. Tariel has the ability to find meaning and let go of things quite swiftly, so I have come to learn. Which to me, can be... in part self demeaning, because I find life and death and loss and rebirth to be quite a sacred process.The second paradox is more so the concept of the human tendency to (1) live in the present and "make it through the day" but paradoxically and environmentally (2) to live in the present, accounting for the past, envisioning a future. Existence in context. Visceral existence. Mental existence. Fundamentally and viscerally, we human organisms are very good at living just to make it through the day. As mental entities in the university, we have to compromise our visceral needs with our mind's tendency to create grand worlds far beyond the near present, near-past, and near-future.
