we leave behind thousands of dead skin cells everywhere we go. everything that is us is left behind and /or swept away to create something new. we are constantly dying and leaving with every movement. our spaces are filled with us.
dust is really made of us, you know? how we are obsessed with cleaning and getting rid of dust and it is really just throwing away the skin that he touched. does that make any sense?
yes, yes it makes perfect sense. you have a perfect mind jess. haruki murakami says something like: body cells relplace themselves every 30 days (or is it every month? every 3 months?). most everything you know about me by now is gone. or something. i can't remember it exactly but isn't that KILLER?
"Body cells replace themselves every month. Even at this very moment," she said, thrusting a skinny back of her hand before my eyes. "Most everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories."
it reminds me of something i was thinking of a couple nights ago. my ex contacted me, wanted to give me things i asked him to a long time (not things, like real things. things like, friendship. the sound of his voice. him missing me. things i wanted then, things i no longer desire now) and i was thinking about how there are people out there missing me, mourning me, the way i have others. we leave spaces and gaps in hearts and most of the time we probably don't even realize it. i wonder how many people are trying to forget me right now, i wonder how many people succeeded at it, i wonder who has cried over me. things like that.
i'm not saying that's what you meant to imply - but that's how it stopped my own heart for the span of reading it.
it is though, kind of what i meant to imply. i was really just thinking about myself and how people leave and how as trivial as it might seem, it ruins the little things, the routines, you know? that you don't realize you were so comfortable with, like knowing you'll see someone at 11:14 every single day and then one day no one's there, you know? and you never noticed the significance of 11:14, until it rolls around and there is just a gap.
and this: thinking of Harlo Shapley's experiment in which he followed one breath of air to see what happens to it. 1% of one breath of air is argon, a noble gas that is chemically inert, ( meaning that it doesn't react with anything else, you breathe it in/out and it remains the same). By calculating the number of argon atoms in one breath of air (3x10^18), and analysing the way in which these atoms disperse, he concluded that if you were to come back to that room a year later, every breath you take would have approximately 15 argon atoms from that one same breath you took a year ago. Using those same calculations, Shapley is able to demonstrate that every breath we take has millions of argon atoms that were once in the body of Joan of Arc or Jesus Christ or dinosaurs from 65 million years ago, every breathe you take will suffuse forms as far as we can see into the future. 12
I think of that like memories. In my mind's eye, I see the space that was once a friend or family. I can picture them there by the table or in the kitchen- that space that is them. They leave that behind for me to recall when I feel the need to know I am not alone. And, I leave my space (or my soul) for them.
I can't imagine friends and family existing when I'm not around, as awful as that seems. I cannot imagine Katie eating breakfast with her family or Eli walking the dog, you know? I can only see them laughing with me, and it sounds very self-centered, but I guess that's how I am.
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haruki murakami says something like: body cells relplace themselves every 30 days (or is it every month? every 3 months?). most everything you know about me by now is gone. or something. i can't remember it exactly but isn't that KILLER?
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i'm not saying that's what you meant to imply - but that's how it stopped my own heart for the span of reading it.
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I like the idea of spaces. Interesting entry. <3.
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