What about after?
Say something. Can you possibly go one day without cranking out the minutiae of everyday life, and stop to tell me something? Say something important, a node to remember. I don't want to forget you, or the space you fill in this world.
Being here for two years has taught me many things, not the least of which is that there's a lot of filler in the cracks.
Picture your node as the filler. Make it hold the tower up. Don't make it temporary--make it two vast and trunkless legs of stone, standing in the desert. Do it for me--do it for you. Do it for the children you don't have, and do it for the ones who are sleeping upstairs.
Node. Node the time of day--why is this moment so special--not important--special? Try to not tell me nothing. Make me remember this second, this infinite moment that won't ever come again. Ask yourself: is this all that I am, a clump of data in a stream that stretches, nearly endless, to the ocean? Fill the void.
Better: can I shine brighter than any sun, am I able to cause earthquakes by whim, make storms where the sunshine was? Can I change the now into legend? Node the war, node the real and the fake, node the tides and tributaries which shape our world. Even better: shape your world. The best: be the one that we all notice today.
Don't take up space: end it. Fill the gap that needs filling, move the unmoveable. Bring me a song, a lyric, a single word, and expand it until I cannot doubt that it is special (that you are special. Unforgettable. Immortal.
Do not make me doubt why I am here--amaze me with a poem. Scare me until I take up nail-biting again. Permit me a glance at the child you were, and the person you hope to become. Tell me of the steps in between, eternal as they are. Trim them down to easily digestible portions, or expand them into seventy courses, each one better than the last. Leave the taste on my lips. Do not allow me to be the same. Make me change.
Tell me what I don't know--keep me away from what I have known all my life. Where are the writeups about whales? Tell me of the roughness or softness of their skin, the warmth underneath it. The sea contains the hottest blood of all. Tell me about the heat. Tell me about code and butterflies and machine guns and ethnic groups and botany. Tell me a story about...
I do not want words, precisely. I want textures and touches. I want sounds. I want the smell in the room; tell me if your neighbours hate it. Tell me about an image, in your mind: does it move you? Why does it move you?
Do this. Do it now, for me.