Meaning means 21 grams of nothing to measurements of everything to attachments full of...

I have to write everything I'm thinking right now. Everything that is rushing and swirling and smearing in the squiggly cracks of my brain and rough walls of my mind. I'm pourng it out in a torrential whirl as fast as it came streaming through.

Creative Writing was incredible today.

We started presenting our "about me" kind of projects, and I sat there knowing they were going to be really good, some great even. This class so far has taught me to reserve my usual harsh judgement and dismissive nature. Everyone is something else underneath, it isn't just a select few like I once thought.

This one kid goes, Adam. Very brooding, very dark, he's kind of a pretentious asshole but in the best way possible and we embrace him for that. His is a picture and a written poem. The poem is about his drug abuse, about vacant rooms and heavy air. About lying in filth and wishing to die. His picture, well... he took it of himself in a tiled shower stall. Cracks between the tiles were jungle green with mildew and dirt. Mold stains streaked the dusty rose colored upper walls. He was nude, facing profile, and in black letters on the back wall it said " I'll rape your wife".

Then we have Nick. He is quirky and humorous and deep in an enlightened way and we embrace him for that. He talks of meanings and what that means to him. He likens himself to a seed, only to show that he isn't a seed, he is himself, and there are only similarities. And that in life, things are meaningless until you attach meaning but the meaning you attach is empty to everyone but you, so is life full of meaning all around you or empty attachments and hope?

Then there was Dan. Dan is funny and a big joke and I've known him forever, but I never knew he had a deeper side. He wrote a beautiful monologue about regretting the past, about lost relationships, second chances that land you elsewhere, and in a sense, love. It was raw and hard to hear, but listening to it all made me think, and I walked out of class with a piece of every single one of them because a piece of each of them were floating in the electrically charged air of that small classroom on the corner.

I have been asking people some pretty weird questions lately that have been popping into my head. The other night sitting with my mom I asked her " what are you made up of?" and she never hesitated in her soft response of "well, I guess I'm made of my family and my experiences and my memories. Thats what defines people I guess. Make sense?"

Yesterday I asked little Mia, the six year old I watch, " Hey Mia what are you made up of?"
In the innocence and literalism only a child can throw at you she says " Um...blood and guts." So matter of factly too.

The other night, I asked Rory if he believed people have souls. He brought up the fact that when someone dies, there is 21 grams that is unaccounted for. Always.

What does this all mean to me, does it mean anything?

So i sit in my cluttered red car, rain collecting, with the skipping cd on, with the windshield wipers off, in the traffic of students, wanting to leave the tarred roadway to Massasoit and spill out onto the dirty streets to wherever.

My thoughts begin to work again, they stopped replaying over and over the class I was just in. I thought hard about what I believed. Is everything we find meaning in all so meaningless? And if that is true, am I just so overly sensitive to find so much meaning in everything I see, or attach meaning to places and objects. But if I'm so overly sensitive how is it that everyone sees me as "the robot", emotionally detached and incredibly stoic? Is the meaning we leave in places and people the pieces of ourselves, those missing 21 grams? Is everyone, past and present, preserved in memories and familiar attachments to otherwise things that are nothing? And why do we even give things meaning? Seashells from a fun day at the beach, a lock of hair, a movie ticket stub, a crumpled picture, a dirty penny, all of this is trash to someone, but treasures to another. So what does that mean?

We are all made up of blood and guts. But whats makes them churn? When we hear our favorite love song or see a rare natural wonder, why do we feel it in our hearts or stomachs? Why is there a sinking feeling, a squeeze, and that dizzying sense of spinning circles when you dig through your dirty room and find your old shoebox of past pictures, dried rose petals, old poems, letters, and miscellaneous items? Is that our souls stirring fo a minute? Is it really in there, holding everything that we feel is so profound and different about our own lives, that we feel sets us apart? Is that where our meaning is, and when we die does it burst free like a bubble into the air?

A week or two ago I hit a cat. The road was really dark, and it scurried out so fast my brakes didnt even have time to slow me. It went through both wheels, and died instantly no doubt. I went back to it and Rory moved it out of the road. We knocked at a nearby house to see if it was theirs, they said no but gave us a bagfor it. Rory picked it up by the legs and I held the bag open.
" Ok Elaine don't look please."

But I did. I was already white as alabaster and choked into silence but I looked. I didn't see blood or any odd angles, it was just a cat, like it was sleeping. Only there was something so different about it. It hung limp. It's eyes held no glint. Instead of green marbles, they looked like mossy stones. And as he lifted it to be placed in the bag, all I could think about was how heavy that cat was. How much weight dangled there.

"I can't do it. No I can't please, I'm sorry I can't put it in the bag."

I couldn't bear to feel the weight of what I caused in between my own hands. That cat was someones pet, someone fed it, pet it, loved it. And that was all gone because I was doing 45 in a 35, have shitty brakes, and poor night vision. My voice was strangled with panic of this realization and regret. Was that little kitty, as heavy as it looked to me, 21 grams lighter?

I feel better that I wrote this, but I still feel confused and on the verge of someting here. I have more to say on the subject, but my battery is dying and I need to find the cable for my laptop. I'm going out tonight, and it will no doubt be an eventful evening with many different parts and moods to it. I'm going to try and relax, take a hot shower.

Breathe deep. 21 grams worth.