transience

An old poem, and older painting, a theme I've often wrestled with.  Everything is so fleeting, and yet forever.  We can't hold onto any of it.  All the way down to who we are, countless moving parts, none of it lasting.  Life thrives when it's growing, changing.  The process of learning itself more valuable than anything we could already know.

↜∑≾∛↗↝

Finally started learning trigonometry in pre-calculus, and it's funny, I remember it pretty well.  My physics teacher pushed me way past the point of merely needing to understand basic trig.  For the first time, in pre-calc, when we're given a bunch of problems to practice, bang bang bang, I was done.  Had the right answers and everything. If that physics teacher weren't fucking with people's futures, I'd say he was actually good.

I have to keep reminding myself of why I'm doing this.  I'm not trying to succeed.  I'm not trying to prepare myself for a career.  I'm not trying to make friends.  I'm trying to exercise my mind such that maybe I'll eventually be able to start thinking about all that.  Rebuild a few neural connections.  In a sense, of course I knew that I was bad at this, but that's why I'm doing it.

I don't enjoy much of anything these days.  I'm pushing on in spite of depression, not getting past it in any biochemical sense.  I enjoy good food, so by extension, I almost enjoy cooking for myself every day.  Aside from that though, I don't have a lot to keep my going.  I've been this way so long, it goes without saying.  It really is an awful condition.