Some things have happened recently that have really made me realize how uneven and impossible to measure everything truly is. I think about my BFA, and how it was supposed to be this giant, monumental event, and if I consider the accomplishment of graduation overall it really is. But when I get to thinking about how that hour actually went, and how I felt when it was over, it was hardly what I planned. BFAs went up, everyone performed, and then we tore them down again. What I remember is that I didn't feel changed. I certainly felt altered after undergrad on the whole, but never in the moments that I was prepared for it. I'm not sure if that's because of expectation or hype, or if pinpointing a cause even matters. The point is that life is built of ups and downs and that it is also unpredictable like everyone says it is, but what the don't mention is that all things are linked by a kind of underlying evenness that no one ever thinks to pay attention to. I don't believe that we can make any one moment or event more important than the next. We can make something extravagant, or attempt to line the odds up in our favor, but in a way it's sort of hopeless. Everyday is just another day. Sometimes extraordinary things do happen, but it is rarely if ever because we plan them. Everything that I consider to have had a profound effect on me as a person has happened on a day that I set out to call mundane.

What "Real" Meant

"We felt compassion, and the compassion tricked us" and we watched it change. And no one saw it move. And none of us knew, but suddenly the world was different and devoid of familiar form. And nothing fit. And every void was somehow deeper with ragged, awkward edges. It made me begin to wonder if all the solidarity had been a lie. I wondered if there were ever stability or the ground. I remembered a time that made more sense, but I couldn't remember the sense. I felt foolish and afraid. My head started spinning. I looked away from my feet. I looked up and to the side. I felt your absence, and that absence filled my chest. And I forgot the sounds you used to make and how familiar you used to feel. You had finally turned to memory, and maybe even to myth. That made me wonder if you had ever been real, and how I would justify that or even know what real meant.