sunflower city

You ever watch a video of yourself from five-or-something years ago and think, “Was this really me” or “…I don’t remember doing that at all”? Or maybe you dig up an ancient high school essay and go “No way in hell I talked like this”?

Because I get that feeling a lot and I’m feeling it right now as I wade into my past journals again for the slightest bits of ammo I can use to get back into writi—shut up Trisha, we’ve been through this, stop bringing this up because every time you talk about trying to write more often again you end up doing the exact opposite of that.

Sorry, self-talk over. Where was I? Ah yes. Past voices sounding alien.

This particular thought was brought on by another particular thought I apparently had back in 2016:

I just… WHAT DID I MEAN? I’ve reread this ten times and I don’t know if I was intentionally trying to sound cryptic (I probably was) but I wish I also expounded on what I was thinking to at least assist future me (a.k.a. me right now) with deciphering what was going on in my head at the time. I have a vague idea of what I meant but it hasn’t solidified yet and I don’t know if it will anytime soon.

I’ve since given up on deciphering what I meant (tabled for a later date, or a later point in time, or a point maybe at the conclusion of this post in which I’m hoping I can wrap this all up in a cool, nonchalant, non-awkward manner), and hopped on a new train of thought: how the present me has absolutely no idea what past me intended.

How, almost every time I read thoughts and pieces from years ago, I barely recognize what I was thinking. How sometimes past Trisha feels almost like a complete stranger.

This ties to a post I recently saw on social media:

“You will never find the same person twice, not even in the same person.” The original quote seems to have been translated from one of the works of Mahmoud Darwish, a Palestinian poet, but I can’t find the exact poem it’s from. I saved it to my phone because it’s just one of those truisms that hits you when you see it, because… it’s true.

I haven’t stopped thinking about this concept, of change, of growth. And there are so many references in the art and media I’ve loved and consumed since I was a kid as to how every single moment of time pounds into us and shapes us into something just a teensy bit different than the moment before.

Pocahontas in the Disney animation sings (in my favorite Disney Pocahontas song, yes, I love it more than Colors of the Wind fight me), “What I love most about rivers is, you can’t step in the same water twice. The water’s always changing, always flowing.” It’s funny how in the next line, she ruminates how people, supposedly, can’t live like that. To be safe. But that’s exactly it. People are, themselves like that. Never the same river twice. Never the same person.

And then here’s an excerpt from Hunter Thompson’s letter to Hume Logan:

When you were young, let us say that you wanted to be a fireman. I feel reasonably safe in saying that you no longer want to be a fireman. Why? Because your perspective has changed. It’s not the fireman who has changed, but you. Every man is the sum total of his reactions to experience. As your experiences differ and multiply, you become a different man, and hence your perspective changes. This goes on and on. Every reaction is a learning process; every significant experience alters your perspective.

A Watsky lyric in Limo 4 Emos points out the sadder side of this change: “We pay taxes, we live frugal, wear new suits to old friends funerals, have true loves until they’re false”. Because sometimes, it’s the person you were years ago that your partner is in love with. Or maybe, the person you are now is almost a completely different person from the person they’ve built you up in their mind to be. Both very real situations. Both terribly lonely.

But my most recent favorite reference to this change comes from Bella in Poor Things: “I am a changingeable feast, as are all of we”. I typed this line down furiously in my phone notes as soon as I watched this scene, because I ABSOLUTELY LOVE THIS. Mark Ruffalo’s twisted, strange-spoken Duncan confronts Bella about how she now reads too many books and has lost her “adorable way of speaking” (barf, ew, barf, repeat) and Bella replies with the best line possible.

I am a changingeable feast, as are all of we.

We are all changingeable feasts and that’s the most beautiful thing.

It’s both sad and wonderful that we are constantly growing, to the point that sometimes we find it hard to recognize even ourselves after particular points in time.

Maybe I’ll never know what 20-year-old me meant by what she said on Wednesday, May 4, 2016 at 8:54 PM. But isn’t it cool that the current 29-year-old me can interpret that sentence now in any way that I want to, this time colored and shaded and stippled by the nine years that I’ve been through since then?

“The instantaneousness of the now is teaching us to stop trying”. To me now, this just means that sometimes we get those sudden moments between peace and a decision that violently shove us to stop attempting to do things and just do them.

Maybe that’s exactly what I meant back then. Maybe it isn’t. And the fact that I have absolutely no idea is pretty cool, isn’t it?

🌻