on death & dying

today, I cannot walk in the streets. today, I am incapable of manoeuvering the dodge. I don't know why.

I found my favorite part of toulouse. it's at the end of rue alsace-lorraine where it becomes rue languedoc, so there's still enough good shops to make it interesting but not busy shopper crazy like closer to capitole. it's near the musée des augustins and place esquirol, a very pleasant little corner, and also near the jardin des plantes. all the adjoining little side streets are cute and artisanal and personalized instead of run-down and sketch. everything feels fresh and pleasant and discoverable instead of typical city grunge. I found the coolest little boutique that I must go back to where I will surely spend too much. I held off on 2 things I wanted (be proud) but got a pencil case for myself and many postcards, all of them unique and pretty much the coolest postcards I've ever seen, except maybe the ones I got in montmartre for kryn that I still haven't sent. 20 euros later, the shop was closing and I was a happy camper.

it seems more and more to me, being around old people all the time and their slow disintegration, that the body betrays us. and not just in old age. there are so many 30 year olds getting cancer. I see 90 year olds in relative good health and 60 year olds who can longer move enough to leave the house and 50 year olds who die out of nowhere, from a heart attack, or fast-moving cancer, or a tumor they didn't know they had. I'm only 20, so I guess I can't really know, but it feels like it didn't use to be like this. we got sick and we died, at all ages, but from the outside enemy, the infiltrating bacteria or some airborn virus. now, the body has revolted and started self-destructing from the inside-out, for some faster or earlier than others. I feel born into a world built on a food system and a way of life apart from the earth and our origins over which I have no control. I don't know what toxins are inside of me, no one does, cause we don't know what, in all of the billions of changes we've made to ourselves and our earth, is causing the internal revolt. it's both out of my hands and inside of them and I feel like death could strike us any day and we're lucky beyond imagining to wake up in the morning, to open our eyes and see beauty, and breathe in the words of the ones we love.

we're dying imperceptibly on our feet.