Bits
To this day, I have heard almost 200 audio hours of interviews. To this day, I have seen hundreds of thousands of people, in images, over the internet (considering that we see, and I say this supposedly as a conservative estimate, 200 ads a day).
In two of my earliest adult memories of being so floored by what I am looking at, I remember looking at a woman who was texting on her cellphone, standing by a hospital, with moles on her face that served only to accentuate her features. I remember looking at a child with three moles on her cheek, in a straight line going from below her eye to her jawline, and how she sat so still in the jeepney, clutching her oversized, violet bag. I remember seeing, for ten seconds, a man walk by the window of the cafe I was then sitting at, whose appearance so struck me that I have written several paragraphs about him, the entirety of which doesn't exist.
More recently, since I just hear voices through my work, I have heard a nurse being interviewed whose laugh was like Natalie Portman's, only slower, more felt, more full-bodied. I have heard a Hispanic man explain to the Caucasian interviewer what "truncated" means, with what I imagine was a wry smile. I have heard a lawyer-scholar who sounds exactly like what, if she were an Ent, a eucalyptus tree would sound like, at its palest, tallest, and slimmest. I have heard a couple married for so long they literally finish, and start, each other's sentences. I have heard a soldier saying "Grass..." the way someone with post-traumatic stress disorder would, when reunited with an anchor to sanity. I have heard a soldier sob and apologize, and I had to stop listening for a good while, because there are no words for this kind of memory. I have heard someone mourning an athlete's death so deeply that his voice broke over with a sigh and a sob wrenched from deep, human places I do not have access to. I have heard men laugh so genuinely I had to pause the file, because the laughter was so clear, and endearing, and real. I have heard a man say, after a therapy session, "I feel green," with such awe you could hear the ocean in his voice and the way his eyes widened in rebirth. I have heard scientists, CEOs, authors, servicemen, revolutionaries, coaches, speakers, scholars, artists, doctors, speak, in varying degrees of erudition, manners, and drifting.
These are no different from what we see and hear of people, online or in the world closer to us, every single day. They will be moments captured and frozen in little files, audio and visual, that can be replicated and can only be experienced as representations. And there is me, falling for a detail, a sigh, a mole, a chuckle always three syllables long with a curl at the end, never quite knowing the thing and the whole of the thing, never having been near it, or its vicinity. And even when it is near me, I can never witness its entirety and its perfection, because I am me. I want to be god, so I can know the thing and the whole of the thing, necessarily from afar, but if I were god I would not experience at all.
Maybe that is what sadness is. It is seeing, and feeling, the 1:30 mark of this dance, and knowing that the song is incomplete, but that moment exists within the song, and that moment is only a moment, which only becomes perfect because everything moves.
And because everything moves, nothing is perfect nor whole.
In two of my earliest adult memories of being so floored by what I am looking at, I remember looking at a woman who was texting on her cellphone, standing by a hospital, with moles on her face that served only to accentuate her features. I remember looking at a child with three moles on her cheek, in a straight line going from below her eye to her jawline, and how she sat so still in the jeepney, clutching her oversized, violet bag. I remember seeing, for ten seconds, a man walk by the window of the cafe I was then sitting at, whose appearance so struck me that I have written several paragraphs about him, the entirety of which doesn't exist.
More recently, since I just hear voices through my work, I have heard a nurse being interviewed whose laugh was like Natalie Portman's, only slower, more felt, more full-bodied. I have heard a Hispanic man explain to the Caucasian interviewer what "truncated" means, with what I imagine was a wry smile. I have heard a lawyer-scholar who sounds exactly like what, if she were an Ent, a eucalyptus tree would sound like, at its palest, tallest, and slimmest. I have heard a couple married for so long they literally finish, and start, each other's sentences. I have heard a soldier saying "Grass..." the way someone with post-traumatic stress disorder would, when reunited with an anchor to sanity. I have heard a soldier sob and apologize, and I had to stop listening for a good while, because there are no words for this kind of memory. I have heard someone mourning an athlete's death so deeply that his voice broke over with a sigh and a sob wrenched from deep, human places I do not have access to. I have heard men laugh so genuinely I had to pause the file, because the laughter was so clear, and endearing, and real. I have heard a man say, after a therapy session, "I feel green," with such awe you could hear the ocean in his voice and the way his eyes widened in rebirth. I have heard scientists, CEOs, authors, servicemen, revolutionaries, coaches, speakers, scholars, artists, doctors, speak, in varying degrees of erudition, manners, and drifting.
These are no different from what we see and hear of people, online or in the world closer to us, every single day. They will be moments captured and frozen in little files, audio and visual, that can be replicated and can only be experienced as representations. And there is me, falling for a detail, a sigh, a mole, a chuckle always three syllables long with a curl at the end, never quite knowing the thing and the whole of the thing, never having been near it, or its vicinity. And even when it is near me, I can never witness its entirety and its perfection, because I am me. I want to be god, so I can know the thing and the whole of the thing, necessarily from afar, but if I were god I would not experience at all.
Maybe that is what sadness is. It is seeing, and feeling, the 1:30 mark of this dance, and knowing that the song is incomplete, but that moment exists within the song, and that moment is only a moment, which only becomes perfect because everything moves.
And because everything moves, nothing is perfect nor whole.
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