Over the hill

As the days march unremittingly toward that two-decade signpost only a couple of months from now, my eerily creaking bones suggest that perhaps it's time for a change in outlook and mindset for what lies beyond the white fences of adolescence; some recent experiences I've had tell me that I need new perspectives for direction, and that the hills past that signpost go unpredictably up and down. What I've read about in books ostensibly exists in colours beyond those pages of black and white, and the culture of academia is often too quixotic for a world not satisfied with hypotheses and best-fit curves, that has little patience for lengthy arguments or esoteric trivia, and which seldom comes equipped with rounded corners, safety harnesses or security features.

Half-full is the same as half-empty, and vice versa; the important thing is finding water to fill up those glasses.

Four Quartets
Burnt Norton
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T.S. Eliot

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden...
________________

It's late and I have to go soon, but something's not packed: I know I haven't forgotten anything at all, on the contrary; I'm missing someone.