metaphortunate | omnia mutantur

Children at Mahalaxmi played ankh micholi, hide-and-go-seek, in and out of the crowds of adult legs. This is how we are to one another, I thought, divided by generations. Do jungle animals understand the true nature of the trees among which they have their daily being? In the parent-forest, amid those mighty trunks, we shelter and play; but whether the trees are healthy or corroded, whether they harbour demons or good sprites, we cannot say. Nor do we know the greatest secret of all: that one day we, too, will become as arboreal as they. And they, the trees, whose leaves we eat, whose bark we gnaw, remember sadly that they were animals once, they climbed like squirrels and bounded like deer, until one day they paused, and their legs grew down into the earth and stuck there, spreading, and vegetation sprouted from their swaying heads. They remember this as a fact; but the lived reality of their fauna-years, the how-it-felt of that chaotic freedom, is beyond recapture. They remember it as a rustle in their leaves.

- Salman Rushdie, The Moor's Last Sigh

One of my strongest memories of childhood, and one that's hard to believe now, is just how long the days were. Second grade, third grade: each day was an epoch. I couldn't see the end of the week from the beginning of it. And that was when I was like five times as old as the Junebug is now. Frankly I'm surprised that he remembers me when I pick him up from daycare in the evening, after not seeing me since the morning.