I saw two things today which I wish to chronicle here because they really made an impression on me. The First was an old man. I was sitting, writing away and smoking in a tobacco shop and across from me, one table diagonally to my right, was this man who moved more slowly than I've ever seen any human being attempt to move before. He rose from his table, reached out, shoved his wallet into his pocket and by that time five minutes (roughly) had passed. He had to be nearing or in his 90's. He struck me as the sloth embodiment of human age.

The second occurrence was actually a conversation I had with a man who must have been in his early 30's who was partially paralyzed on his left side. We got to talking and he told me that when he was 19 years old, he had a hemorrhage in his brain that caused him to go into a coma for two weeks and wake up completely paralyzed and unable to speak. Now he can walk on his own with only a brace on his left calf-to-toe and a shuffle. He carries his left arm without any coordination or proof of much control over it, yet still he is a functioning human being with what seemed to me (at least at the moment) to be a very peaceful, optimistic attitude.

I am very close to the lowest weight I have been in over a year. That weight is, embarrassingly, 112.2 pounds. I have not weighed myself since 113.6 pounds this morning so I may actually be in the 112's right now - I plan to take a nap and weigh myself after. I also may not have lost any weight at all. That is a distinct possibility that I am keeping in the front of my mind so that I am not disappointed when I finally do weigh myself later.

I realize that it has been a very long time since I have been in the double digits weight-wise. I am looking forward to being there again. I think I have tracked that last time to being January and early February of 2009. There is a lot that I used to be or have or do that I am not or haven't had or done in over a year. I think in this last stretch of time between then and now so much has changed that my life now is practically unrecognizable as the same life I breathed then. I don't even know where to begin to track all of the changes. But I can feel them now, when I come across something familiar that is not a part of my life anymore. That sticks out to me, and is even sometimes painful - even when that familiar thing was ultimately the worst thing for me. I still miss what I have lost... I don't know what I have lost though.

Sitting in that tobacco parlor a couple of hours ago, I had this overwhelming sense that I was losing something at that very moment. Something worth grieving over. Something that I will spend the rest of my life missing and longing for. But I don't know what that could possibly be!? I was just sitting there, writing. I wasn't doing anything, making any decisions, changing my life in any radical way. I was simply feeling an awful, charbroiling, conflagration of grief absolutely booming in my sternum. I don't want that again. I've lost and grieved so much in my life, and still do - I really don't need anything fresh to grieve for. There is only so much I can afford to feel before my body is too full of it all and it has nowhere to go but out.