Memory Machines (Gapless)

If you think of time
Not as a measure of linear progression
Where we live as ants marching to our deaths
Little by little
And speeding up the closer we get to the grand finale
But instead, like Kurt Vonnegut once explained
As a series of incredible moments revealed all at once
Happening, experienced, and witnessed simultaneously
As a mountainscape of beauty
Maybe we could change
The way we choose to live our lives

I first see myself as a child
The world towering around me
And then I'm older, a skinny, unsteady version
Of the person I'll become
And then I'm much older, and I'm unhappy
And then I'm realizing what's important
And then I'm gone

And then I see you
In flashes of instances
Little 16-millimeter camera lens fuzziness
Soft and hazy
You have the most beautiful expressions

And the world is so green, and so blue, and so red
Petals unfold in starkening ways
And sunlight humbles me as I bask in golden silk
We are just memory machines
Taking each moment and storing them away
To reminisce later and wish we were there

And when I see all of these moments
As a living, breathing canvas
Of beauty and complexity
A world of color, and light, and texture
Flourishing and withering
Existing right before my eyes
And time is expansive, and never-ending
Like the souls inside us
Or the blackness of night
Or the ceaseless ocean waves
And I sink into the forever reality
That neither begins nor ends with me