January 22, 2003 | 2:56 PM

There are zen moments of total harmony and clarity. And there are moments where I want to blow the past away like so much dandelion fluff, watch it scatter and lose its structure, becoming meaningless and obsolete.

Conversations and scenes from my own history dart across my consciousness and my stomach turns and flips, knowing what I know now. A few days ago, I couldn�t stop throwing up. It felt like every single moment of the past eight years lead up to this crescendo, this final denouement�like the last chord in A Day in The Life.

Which is silly of course, because life is change and this moment is only one of many moments, each giving birth to another. Life is not like in the movies with a definitive beginning and middle and end. It�s more like a jazz improvisation piece where themes repeat and double back on themselves.

And yet there are so many small deaths and regenerations that every moment is a story in itself.

I can pick a point in time, a moment say five years ago when I walked down the street and felt truly happy and filled with love and that moment was forever to me.

Just as now I sit at my desk struck numb and hollow, attempting to make sense of everything that�s fallen down all around me, the radical shift in my own perceptions and emotions, the drastically different take I now have on my past (it reminds me of the end of a film like Memento where you learn a bit of new information and suddenly see everything that happened before in a new way)

And this too�this confusion and sadness and anger�this feels like forever.

Because each moment is paradoxically fleeting and eternal.

I would have never known ten years ago that my life would have lead up to this moment now, with all its blessings and curses. And ten years from now I will look back and think the exact same thing. The beautiful and terrible dichotomy of life is that you just never know how anything will turn out. You can�t control it. You just have to let it wash over you and accept the truth of each instant.

Allowing this anguish, this loss, this devastation to coincide with something higher and better, something full of wisdom and universal love is a balancing act I attempt to master all day long. Resisting the need to psychoanalyze the actions and motivations of others (especially since I�m so darn good at it) is difficult but necessary. That is an outmoded defense mechanism of mine, and however entertaining it is for me to do, however correct or incorrect I may be in my analysis, the process of doing so is detrimental to my own well being�attempting to �figure people out� is a distraction from my own learning. It is also dehumanizing to me and to those I pick apart like small bugs. The psychological motivations of others are their own business and none of mine. My busienss is my feelings. My growth. My spirit. And my health.

Fixed ideas and a lack of dedication to my own intuition keep me from becoming actualized.

And so I am taking deep breaths and being quiet in myself. Allowing each moment to run its course and wash over me, cleansing and renewing me. And I am thankful, most thankful for the space I have to do this. And for the discipline I have cultivated in a short period of time, which is allowing me to do this for myself. To recognize the terrible and the wonderful, disregarding neither.

A transformation is taking place. And I do not yet know what I will become.

Isn�t life terrible? And isn�t life wonderful?