quickly forgetting was the way I lived my life

I have a friend I listen to albums with every Sunday.

Last weekend we listened to Thanksgiving by the artist Thanksgiving.

We like a lot of the same songs (we like a lot of the same things).

We agreed that our favorite track was number twenty-two, Oregon.

The lyrics focus on self-definition and one's own navigation of the world.

Let me know I am best for the life I've been given. That there is no one else who would be better at living it.

I've been thinking about identity and what it means to me. How I orient myself has been heavily influenced by the people I have met, and the places I've been. The salient moments of my life have been defined by shared experiences. I conceptualize identity as a piece that fits in to the whole of of social experiences. These outside forces create patterns I have to react to. Subjectivity? What else can we be, but a collection of relationships and shared moments? A series of yes, no, maybe, I don't knows... [silence]. A vessel of actions and/or. A place where memories and goals wrestle between sheets and mason jars filled with scarlet wine? Movement. We could be linear, but that would be fooling our selves. We are shapes that reoccur, bifurcate, meet dead ends and double back to new directions like fractals in the snowy blow.

Some of us carry the weight of our collective pasts with a sense of duty more than others. It's alluring to let ghosts and shadows determine how we live our life. I used to say “No”. I used to say “shed whatever husks, if you are ripe”. I'm learning how to work through loss without burning the whole shit down. I'm learning how to fill in the holes with sprouts. I'm learning what to revisit and revision. I'm learning what to cover with a heap of soil. Identity is the navigation of these experiences. It is deciding what to water and what to prune. Who I am, who I have been in past lives, and where I am going.

As a fog or a mist wrapped around a hill. A few implied questions from mystery will.

It doesn't hurt so much to be wrong about things. It's natural to make mistakes and learn from them. Learn from the ghosts. Learn from the letters in drawers, the alters, the (promises) and [pacts]. How to carry on?

Well with a head held high I suppose.