07/09/2024
i feel like i just got here. y’know when some people imagine the afterlife as a vast rolling landscape with wheat stalks blowing in the wind? billowing bright clouds? no discernable horizon? what’s got me thinking about it is this video, i love this channel because of their really long ambient mixes. but people in the comments are talking about imagining this as where you go when you die. and obviously i’m imagining the music as well, unable to tell if it’s coming from the sky or the ground from some sort of invisible speaker, or if it just becomes the sound inside your head.
this is what freaks me out about eternity. you arrive in this place at an undisclosed time, with no motivation to investigate. and it all feels familiar, but fresh. you have a fresh understanding you are someplace different. and you no longer even have the skills to investigate. you could wander through the prairie forever, you never get hungry or tired and the sky never stops beaming down that bright blue (where’s the ocean, though? the sky reflects the ocean, if you walked far enough could you find it?). i don’t find it comforting, to experience something peaceful forever (and one of the several reasons i could not survive as a vampire). do i need to be comforted in the afterlife, though? everything is Over, if i have no motivation to find something new about the situation, there becomes a lack of lust for comfort, right? but, and i cannot stress this enough, i feel like i just got here.
the novelty of change in the moment is what i believe to be comforting. feeling like you just landed there, you have a moment to breathe, finally. that is what i believe you have to feel forever in able for it to be a worthy reward. that fresh feeling of a new experience and understanding that what is done is done, and understanding exactly what is ahead. and yes, i can get as esoteric about the afterlife and beautiful expansive prairies that smell like the transition between spring and summer, but that’s not really what i’m talking about. i am desperate for change nowadays. a version of myself from the past would have been terrified that i would say that, but it’s true. i feel the clock ticking on the city i live in and the passions i have. i understand that change is coming, and it will be good. and i feel the shadow of change in the way the world works, and that shadows morphs and shapeshifts everyday – we’ll never see it’s true form. everything is about to change, and i am ready. what i am not ready for is the moment before it all gets good again, because that’s the scariest. when i think it’s all a mistake, and i should stay comfortable in my job, my city, my little inner world. but then you open your eyes and they don’t even have a hard time adjusting, the sun is just as bright as it needs to be. and you remember that you just got here.