I could be sleeping right now, or eating a potato (I have seven pounds of raw potatoes - no other food, just potatoes), or brushing my teeth. But there's something about the predawn hour, lulled by the soulful crooning of Adam Levine, that causes casual observations over the past few weeks to conspire and strike me with a sense of wonderment, curiosity, pensiveness...
Everything looks the same. Two seemingly identical pictures, placed side-by-side mere months apart, and you are to spot the differences. This guy cusses now, whereas his mouth used to be spotless. That girl does not wear makeup anymore - or at least not as noticeably. And everyone, everyone looks older - as if the weight of the world slowly crushes down upon the shoulders of youth, a little a day, until the mirror gives way to the tragedy of Dorian Gray...but no, that would be fiction.
So bravo, soldier, you have noted the fall of the world, the embodiment of maturity, responsibility, time. But what does it all mean? Where have you been, darling, where are you going?
The soap dish in my bathroom slides ever so slowly, unnoticeably along a slippery trail of its own creation, from its perch beside the faucet and towards the sink. One day it will collide with the floor of the basin, releasing the Dove from the plastic cage - at which point I will simply place the soap back into the dish, and the dish back in its rightful place beside the faucet.
Make that six pounds of potatoes.
