Defining Moments...

We all look for defining moments in our life. Punctuations in our otherwise continuous survival. Pinpoints. Put up on the refrigerator door to feel good about ourselves. A scrapbook neatly arranged into dates, color-coded, and cross-referenced. A neat row of milestones behind us to lull us into the security that life can be written onto a set of greeting cards. That all of it can be arranged into sections, like a shopping mall. Where you can walk into your past and know from the labels just where you need to go...to relive an old incident, to relearn an old lesson, or just to look up something you never intended on doing or being. Like a grammatically correct sentence, with the appropriate amount of commas in between, to pause for effect.

And a nice big full stop at the very end for everyone, an exclamation point for the fortunate and the prosperous. The proverbial fulfillment of everything. The answer to the question of Life. We look away at the very mention of the Big White Light being a question mark. That after all this time we still leave with questions unanswered...dreams unfulfilled...thoughts unsaid...moments left behind. That after everything we've been through, we're still lost between the sun and the moon and the almanacs. That after the countless debates, discussions, self-reflections and analysis's, the tombstone lacks the phrase it needs. A whirly mist of overlapping shapes. A shadow play of silhouettes.

And so we look for song lyrics in our existence. Turn to chocolates and shoulders. Stare into the night and think about intersections. Pick up the phone and dont dial. Help the needy and play monopoly. Take annual vacations. Cut ourselves shaving, burn ourselves cooking, wound ourselves trusting. Give names to emotions, titles to streets, and hearts to strangers. Define our lives into little moments that only we can remember. Catalog them neatly into our mind and guard them jealously, in hope that at the very end all the pieces will fit together into one giant jigsaw.

Its all just one big cotton-candy machine. Smeared eye-shadow fading into last night's bruise. A tinge of purple in gray. Broken pieces of the last glass.