Padlock

Velocity brings me back to 2011 - I say velocity, and not time, not because I'm too afraid to deny the existence of the hands of a clock, but because velocity epitomises the essential factor of time, and because time is fearless of  cleverly shifting into another of its robes of stealth. It is surreptitious in manner, and it has an extremely funny way of messing with everyone's minds, occasionally depositing unwanted seeds which slowly fester into a potful of wasted space, a space better cultivated for healthier fruit to grow. I am in the year 2011, it is September, and I am but an impressionable teenager awaiting the ocean of opportunity that would soon hit my shores like a ferocious wave. I am eager in curiosity, testing out new platforms, opening up to first loves, struggling with the associated heartbreaks, learning the ropes of adulthood, finding it difficult to make frequent Skype calls to the people who matter, exploring academic critique and realising that people's minds are completely warped in tangled information, inviting 3am thoughts, making potentially life-changing decisions...

It feels no different now than it did, and it strikes my two questioning feet that maybe, this is how I would feel forever. This is how everything has been, is, and will be. That velocity will always be shaking me regardless of how still I stand, and that it will never fail to hold its grip on me. It feels eerily familiar to think how at the end of the day I am but a capsule of fibre waiting to dissolve, and when that day comes how differently I would perceive the speed of time, and the way it's shaped my thought process on everything that has happened here on earth.

But I still find myself envisioning a different now, a present moment where time is never the enemy, and where all it does is bring me the memories I intend to engrave forever on the walls of my stubborn heart. I am wishfully thinking, and I know better than to put myself through the denial of thinking time had its brakes, or that it had the power to spring up the exact selective files to compliment my ideal storage of things. Velocity is a double-edged sword, and I am dodging every potential swing of the blade very very feebly. But I am alas still in and out of this year, the last year, the one before that...and I am but a wanderer in the shoes that have trudged across those 36 months, only to come back to the tangible present and wonder how I travelled here, with this amount of baggage. I am loaded with time, and a second later, I am not. I am loaded with curiosity, and a second later, I grow risk averse.

I am loaded with assurance, but a second later, it gives way.