To see a world in a grain of sand

I meet so many different people in so many different ways when I am traveling around. Some meetings are random, some are electrifying, some are awkward, some are mandatory, some are accidental, some are surprising, and some are so natural they must have snuck up on foggy little cat feet. Some people are mediocre, some are immature, some are entertaining, some are enviable, some are memorable, and some are so extraordinarily compatible Fate must have carefully fine-spun her silk web just for you.

All these different individuals span across my memory as jewels in an Indra's net. My mind is a vast white space expanding out in all dimensions infinitely, and my net is glittering below. I look in one jewel, and I see the convoluted crossroads that brought me to that meeting in time, and I see the reflections of all other jewels that were also affected, whether those are in the past or future of this one jewel matters not. The Indra's net of my memory holds no sense of time because "the pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory" (Bergson). The fine interdependencies of the jewels propel me mercilessly towards the edges of the net, so fast I barely have time to look back. The net is infinite like my mind and infinitely reflected within itself so there is no edge; as I am impelled forward by my life on Earth, new jewels materialize continuously at the horizon and more and more reflections shine brighter and brighter, casting their light towards the path of my destiny.


...so fast I barely have time to look back. People I never got to know, people I never saw again, people I never said apologized to, people I never tried hard enough with, and people I never forgot I shared a special connection with, a mutual understanding so inspiring it would have made the star-crossed lovers jealous. Can these people never be recaptured, are they truly lost to me forever? A crueler punishment than Tantalus' in Tartarus, is this the net that Fate cleverly wove for humans? No time for sadness, no time for nostalgia, no time for pity, definitely no time for regrets...... Oh but in my headlong plunge towards the ends of my universe I still try to turn back for a few glances, the tears flying out, droplets wavering in midair for a slow second... then crashing down as I finally summon my strength and move onwards pushing my boundaries, only glistening jewels upon glistening jewels of my memory remaining.