It's not the same anymore

It's really not the same anymore, is it? Big Frank means, how it used to be - you know - back before now. Or is it? Maybe that's a way of bifurcating people: there are those with whom it is actually the same now as it was --- back then (however, you define it, and if that's too vague, then let's say - not all that long ago.) There is a pattern that develops in your life and one can settle into that pattern and welcome it, or (as Duke Adamski famously said - "or else not"). These patterns (think about them, sometimes they can last for weeks, or months, or for many many years) mark the epochs of your life. You can categorize your life by them: You were very very little and remember looking at rabbits, and sitting in your mother's lap, and walking down the street hand in hand with your dad - were those memories or memories of pictures - ; then lots of sitting in lots of desks in grade school and high school (that can be condensed very easily in one sentence, but in your mind it has lots of pictures, but whatever - it's different now for sure. OK we've covered all the really young stuff. Now you graduate from high school and go away to college (some of you, most of you) and that's different from now; then (for you who were there - those still there, well the rest is what is to come.) Then jobs, marriage, kids, no-kids, and then what? It's different again. So it's always getting different even when you think it's just the grinding on of more of the same - still "different" (love those words in quotes - it's like by enclosing them you somehow make them "different".) [Different, enclosing (more of the same) slowing, but actually quickly moving into (something quite different) until you are actually into a totally Different.] Then (there's always a "then") what about the world of you and them? At first you and him/her is quite tight, and then not so tight, and then . . . it's just you (and, of course, him/her . . . apart). Then there are lots of him/her- him/her - her/him - hem/hir etc. until it becomes somewhat not different from the intial different, and then just when you least expected it - it's suddently really different and there you again just being you (but thinking about him/her/ hir/hem, and then not. Until the big interest (stamp collecting, woodmaking, meeting these people who want to meet new people, meeting people who are not all that interested in meeting new peope, meeting nobody, etc. Then suddently - it's the same again - but you know it will soon be different - same old same! Then (always another "then") all of a sudden (actually it's never so sudden, but rather gradually, but it's not so dramatic to say "then after a long stretch of time - so long that this person never ever was aware of the passage of time as it passed him/her by to the point where one day they (either him or her) woke up and noticed: OMG - it's so different! But it was/is and it always will be/was/ has been.