While waiting

I'm waiting for the ice to melt into my soba dipping sauce and form the ideal 1:1 proportion that the sauce bottle recommended, so that I can have cold noodles on an already cold evening.

While waiting, I've been doing what comes quite naturally to me: searching the Internet for names, phrases and concepts that come to mind, things I wonder about, places to revisit, questions I'd like to get answers to. Today I found myself keying in, "z-a-c-s-m-i..."

I first heard about Zac Smith halfway through last year. This video was being posted on a few of the blogs I followed then. I got the message, but I didn't know what to make of the video itself, of Smith's shockingly smooth delivery and seeming expressionlessness. We share the same beliefs; I agree with everything he says about purpose and eternity and the inevitable mortality of material existence; but still, I wondered that he never once choked up.

I heard a few months later that he'd died. Now, another few months later, I thought of him again, while waiting for the ice to melt in my soba sauce. No apparent reason; his name just came to mind. I found a lesser-known video of him in which he addresses the 17-year-old Zac Smith.

Just as deadpan, yet still thought-provoking.

What do you think your future self would tell you?

Mine, I hope, has more to say than "the ice has melted".

Which, soon, it will have.

From Zac Smith, I went on to search for Jeromy Deibler, another guy diagnosed young with a serious illness (chronic, not terminal -- sometimes it takes us a bit too long to realise it's life that's terminal), and from there was led to this song by his band, FFH.

In the waiting, indeed.

The ice has melted.