six years ago, i didn't have any children. this may seem like an obvious fact, but it underlines the changes in my life in such a short period. the years have gone so quickly and though the fabric of my life has changed and even my brain and my beliefs have grown and focused, i feel in so many ways like the same person, lost as ever. i feel the same questions i always had rattling around in my head and the same pangs in my heart in my memories and in my hopes. this is the same body. this is the same face, the same hands and eyes. yet so much that i see has changed. the differences in my life may in fact far outstrip the similarities, but at my core, i feel like me. i am the same emotional being i have always been.

and on the eve of september 11, i am forced to consider the changes in those six years. nothing can stop that i am reminded by the date itself and by the world around me of where i was and what i was doing six years ago tomorrow. i must then consider who i was then - what i thought and felt and how that has been transformed by years of perspective and learning.

as much as i confront the idea that so much has stayed the same, i am struck by how much is different. each is the inverse of the other - me then as me now, and me now as nothing like me then. they are two sides of the same mirror - staring into each other - the me's confronting that which remains true and that which has drastically altered. as i realize the differences, i am struck by the similarities, and as i confront the similarities, i am struck by the differences. conceptualizing this exercise into a spatial form would be like those escher drawings and the inevitable impossibilities of simultaneous being.

it is the way of the universe - while one truth is created, others are destroyed, but at the same time in parallel dimensions, the others live while the choice then not-made dies. it is the meaning of the word "is." to be is to imply the possibility of not being. what is true will always, elsewhere, be false. what towers that were destroyed, elsewhere still stand, and still elsewhere, never existed at all. those who died were never born, those that lived decayed. where this war rages, somewhere there is peace. and we hold in our hearts, all possibilities. peace remains or flourishes and the truth of who i was is the truth of who i will be. it is all there, doing its somersaults amidst my unmarked neural pathways and amidst those marked as well - this sense of being small and helpless and confused, and yet strong and confident and able. i am this and all things and this and all things, i am not. it is how i can be happy with where i'm at and who i am - i remain ever the ghost of myself and all possibilities are forever open to me.