nichts

If I ever had the chance to be someone other than who I am, and decided to actually take that chance, I would be one of the following:

No.

I would love to visit the past and do things that the Dave Smith of today would never have the opportunity to do, but I don't think I would ever really want to be anyone other than David Addison Smith, whatever that has ever, does, and will ever, entail. There never has been, and never will be, another me to cough and stroll his way across the days, weeks, years, plagued by doubt and happiness. This is right. It's just me and my dreams, the latter as nebulous as the former, and both as thin and ephemeral as the world which anchors them, though no less powerful for all that.

Time, marching in leaden boots, sometimes in straight lines, sometimes in lazy spirals; sometimes hand in hand with Self, sometimes utterly disassociated. I can feel it all unraveling and knitting back together, drawing in new strands and threads, dropping old ones only to pick them up again and add them to the skein at hand.

Nothing makes sense, and it never has to. Just play the hands across the loom, hear the click of the shuttle, and realize that you weave nothing, march nowhere. The universe started in that void that is the moment before you started walking, before you sat down to weave. Before God put on his boots and took a seat at the loom. Walk. Weave. Return to nothing. Nothing is you, me, everything: terrifying indeed. We all wanted to march somewhere, weave a tapestry of meaning, and some of us- the fools, the geniuses, the madmen- did, or are, or will. But the threads, rich and vibrant, and the road, dusty and choking and stretching on between rows of stately trees, are not really there. The trick is not caring. Weave on. Walk on. Ex nihilo, ad nihilo. Nothing is the shining substance(lessness) that was, is, will be. Ignore the tight, tiny gaps between threads, and pay no mind to the spaces between footfalls, even though they are where you are.

Nothing makes sense, and it never has to.