Author: adasimone

The invention of the airplane is also the invention of the plane crash.

The invention of one life is the undoing of another.

I’ve been trying to teach myself flight, while ignoring gravity’s tug.

Someday, I’ll learn to live with both the falling and the floating.

Instead of running from entropy, I’ll hang it on the walls.

At parties, I’ll say, “Now that’s what I call a reframe.”

And probably no one will laugh, but I’ll tell myself it’s poetic anyway.

*Written while reading Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill

Here is what I believe: everything matters and nothing matters. 

I walk around, holding fistfuls of everything and nothing. I live in the tension between: I both matter completely and not at all. 

I believe our impact, our energy, our existence ripples far beyond what we can know or see. We are butterflies and each extension of our wings changes the world around us. 

I am changed every day by the people around me. I am changed by the people who changed the people changing me. 

I am the comments my 8th grade art teacher made about me. 
I am the observation I overheard the cashier make when I was seven. 
I am the almost-daily confessions I hear. 
I am the thousands of times my parents told me they loved me. 

I am made up of people and moments, of biology and magic. 

I am shaping the world and being shaped by it. 

But I am also less than a heartbeat in the universe's pounding heart. So many people have come before me and so many will, I hope, come after. 

All we have are these moments: the moments that matter completely right now, but may be forgotten some day. 

So breathe it in: this moment, this ordinary moment. 

For most, it will pass like a sigh. Here and then gone. Blink and you miss it. It’s just a moment, after all. 

But if you pause, you’ll see there’s a pulsing magic here too. A glowing thread weaving us together. 

This moment is a miracle, carved from all the split second decisions that collided to bring us to the same space at the same time. 

We’re the only ones who get to taste this magic. And we only get to taste it once.

Here is what I believe: everything matters and nothing matters. 

I walk around, holding fistfuls of everything and nothing. I live in the tension between: I both matter completely and not at all. 

I believe our impact, our energy, our existence ripples far beyond what we can know or see. We are butterflies and each extension of our wings changes the world around us. 

I am changed every day by the people around me. I am changed by the people who changed the people changing me. 

I am the comments my 8th grade art teacher made about me. 
I am the observation I overheard the cashier make when I was seven. 
I am the confessions the almost-daily confessions I hear. 
I am the thousands of times my parents told me they loved me. 

I am made up of people and moments, of biology and magic. 

I am shaping the world and being shaped by it. 

But I am also less than a heartbeat in the universe's pounding heart. So many people have come before me and so many will, I hope, come after. 

All we have are these moments: the moments that matter completely right now, but may be forgotten some day. 

So breathe it in: this moment, this ordinary moment. 

For most, it will pass like a sigh. Here and then gone. Blink and you miss it. It’s just a moment, after all. 

But if you pause, you’ll see there’s a pulsing magic here too. A glowing thread weaving us together. 

This moment is a miracle, carved from all the split second decisions that collided to bring us to the same space at the same time. 

We’re the only ones who get to taste this magic. And we only get to taste it once.