the smallness of it all

I was reading my medieval history book the other day, and i started to get this strange feeling, as if i were a slinky bouncing back and forth in time. Or not quite that, but... Time is linear, they say. Well, it is, but i don't think that's the end of it. Do you ever feel like Time is a sort of telescope, pointing at something? And sometimes you just barely manage to catch a glimpse down the barrel? You can see Time all at once, as in everything is happening on top of each other, and you can see the patterns, and you feel a strange unity with all people in the past and present and future. Truly there is nothing new under the sun. At the same time there is a strange, unfulfilled yearning for you know not what, and you wonder if you are looking up or down the telescope barrel, and if what you saw was the focus of the telescope or the person doing the focusing. you think of all of the small, seemingly insignificant details that have made you who you are and have brought you to this, specific place... and of all the things you thought were significant but aren't, really - at least, not anymore. Time is flying, running up and down, twisting and turning like some vast rollercoaster (and for some reason, it's always blue - dunno why), and all of the sudden it's over, and you're you, and you think how irrelevant it is that you're sitting on a faded green couch that you bought for $100 at a thrift store, drinking a can of apple juice.... everything is slightly out of focus and you think you know how those people in movies feel when they're in slo-mo... and all those famous names and places one can't help hearing about - they're given context. they were born, raised, etc. and you wonder if anyone you know will make it into a history book, and how strange it will seem... you imagine trying to explain to your children what life was like "back in the nineties" or how you thought that those people telling you planes were crashing into the WTC must be joking, and how you felt that after that everything was different, yet nothing had changed or how people used to not have internet and how weird cellphones were when they first come out. You imagine them laughing at the silly outfits people wear in your yearbooks, just like you laugh at your parents... you wonder how people can look at the vast expanse of history and the smallness of you and not believe in a God, and you wonder how, if there is a God, you ever came to believe he might spare thought on your slight concerns, such as finding your nail clippers for that hangnail that's really bugging you and which it now seems almost conceited of you to notice. then you look back at your book and remember that you have a test tomorrow and you really have to study, and where did you put those nailclippers?