‘O brave new world that has such people in it. Let’s
start at once.’
I’ve been putting this off for a while now. Part of the reason is because I don’t know what I want to say. Or by saying what needs to be said, I’m admitting there’s something worth saying. Or I want what I say to be genuine and perfect in a heart-breakingly charming fashion. It’s funny how the little things get in the way. I couldn’t write because I had so many things to do, so many people to say goodbye to. I had to pack, or pay bills or watch that one movie with that one person because it might be my last chance ever. Sometimes I have a bad habit of running away from the only thing that can save me, spiraling further into the rabbit hole when what I really need is to see the sun. I don't know what this blog will be for you. For me it is the first deep breath you take after being underwater for an inestimable amount of time.
As some/all of you know, I recently moved approximately 500 miles from home to start my New Life in my New City with my New Self. Let’s start there. Leaving the town I’ve called home for the past 6 years, everything I own strategically crammed into the backseat of Seabiscuit, I found that my predominant emotion was a lack of emotion. Don’t get me wrong. I was sad/scared/elated… but at the same time not. I cried, but for a significantly shorter period of time than I thought I might (because let’s face it, I’m a crier. A fucking Cheerios commercial can move me to tears). I found that my most pressing emotion was an overwhelming desire to reassure the people I was leaving behind. I wanted the perfect, enigmatic statement to let my friends know I love them and always will. I wanted to tell them I’m going to be ok, even if I don’t always believe it myself. I wanted a pre-packaged literary reference, obscure enough that only a few would understand its origin. The funny thing about trying to use someone else’s words to embody your own emotions: they always come out just a little askew.
Nobody else could tell Josephine to rock dem bimoneez, because the beat is going to drop even though I’m gone.
Nobody else could beg Florence to please please please take care of herself, because she deserves the very best this life has to give her. She is beautiful and I adore her.
Nobody could tell Eris she is strong and lovely and going to tear this world apart; to be careful with her words because they hold more power than she understands.
Nobody else’s words can tell Lucy thank you for 458 days of loving me.
So there I was, cruising 80 MPH down the interstate, so distracted by wanting to say the right words that I forgot to feel the right feelings. Then the sun broke out of the clouds and Montana said goodbye to me with a sun-flare in my rearview mirror and it was so much more beautiful than anything I could ever find the words for that I knew everything I needed to say had been said already. You guys, it was fucking poignant. It was poetry and music and art all rolled into one second of light. That instant when you feel all of the beauty the world has to offer rolled into one insignificant moment so heavy you think your sternum might crack from the effort of holding it all in.
2011 was a big year for me, some of the happiest and most devastating days of my life. I’ve never felt so deeply, lost so completely, loved so wholly… it was a year of superlatives. I suppose that’s part of getting older; every year has to scramble around trying to outdo the one before it. It was a year of growing, shrinking, dying, living exhaustively, dreaming, forgetting to dream… And so I’m running again, either away from the past or towards the future. Is there really any difference when you stop to think about it? I am running away from the ache in my chest every time the light is just-so underneath the street lamps when I’m thinking purple. I’m carrying a box full of postcards and an envelope full of mood rings. I’m holding onto my blue heron dreams and looking for my yellow bird. I know that I am capable of loving, and being loved. It’s not much, but goddamnit, right now it’s enough.
My junior year of college I took an introductory poetry workshop, and the teacher introduced me to this poem, which continuously reshapes my life:
Early Photograph I
Here’s one of me up on hunger’s
balcony, my head just emerging
from the golden smog of childhood, my ideas
still stuck to my back like new wings.
Oh the trouble they gave me on the way
down, not because they didn’t open
but because they did, catching on all
the invisible, simple machinery of the air,
all I had to trust to when I cast
myself down into my life, jumped away
from the shadow-parent, the formal exams, the temptation
to stay suspended in perfect thirst forever.
-Jean Gallagher
So much and so little has happened in the last few days. I promise I will share my adventures with you guys as soon as I’ve had a little time to process them. I hope you know how much I love you.
I’m thinking about you all the time.
[Update: I finally figured out 8tracks! Hooray! Anyone who wants to hear my goodbye playlist oughta check it out here: There's Really No Good Time for Anyone to Leave]
-b
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