Possibilities

Think of the possibilities, X tells me. The birdsquawks outside, the seeds flying through the air, music down a windy street remind him that there are still possibilities, he says, maybe even for him. He could travel, see the world. He’s seen some of it already, he says, but what does it amount to? A grain of sand. And it would all be different now, he says, nothing ever stops, seeds keep flying and growing and each possibility is pregnant with possibilities. Maybe not so much for him, he says, but how good to know they’re there all around him, despite him. Imagine how they’re living in Paris right now, he says, with their baguettes and their flirting, it’s summer there too. Or in Rome, he says, with their mopeds and ice cream. The seeds are flying there too, he says, through the sunlight and onto the ruins and cars. Consider Mongolia, where they’re probably driving their Ladas and throat singing in the dust, he says. What season is it there? He could go and find out, head for the Trans-Siberian railroad and get distracted on the way by a thousand people, a thousand sights and accidents. And even they would only be a grain of sand, he says. How good to know that each possibility is so ripe and rife with possibilities, he says, and that each possibility in turn slips away from him into other possibilities. And to be both inside and outside possibility, which is life, he says, the continuance of life which is never already here but always waiting to be rediscovered or reinvented and therefore is an affirmation of death in the same breath, of death in life and life in death, as he slips between possibilities, always and never ending, always becoming and leaving what he was, appearing and disappearing.