time to say goodbye
dealing with endings
A body can feel it coming. A pulling in the chest, gravity stronger at the bottom of the eyes, fog coating the brain. A date on a calendar is more than numbers, a ticket for a flight is more than a transaction. The body knows — predicts change and loss and sadness and hope. The body knows that everything must end, but the body resists regardless: folding into itself, hardening and softening, dripping at the edges.
Soon, I will leave New York, this city that I love and have loved so many times. I will be heartbroken by the distance, pondering how we will both change before we see each other again, if we see each other again. My hair may be longer or shorter, the weather warmer or colder. Neighborhoods will look different and restaurants will open and close and recognizable places will lose their familiarity, dimming the glow of recognition. I want to return, but maybe not this year. I want to return, and maybe not just for a visit. Yet, the future is unknown, so I must say goodbye — wishing, hoping that I will be back.
Everything is like this. We are constantly meeting people, re-meeting people, coming together to reflect ourselves in each other and transform a little bit each time. Our worlds are turned by the perspectives of extended interactions; the stories we tell ourselves and others gain new details and lose others. Anything can happen in a conversation regardless of its brevity. Sometimes none of this happens, and a moment is a moment, and the world continues to turn. Either way, all of these meetings must to come to an end — this dinner can’t last forever, our cups must empty, the venue must close, the sun must set, the people must sleep, life must continue until it doesn’t.
I met so many people this month from the past and from the present, and everything felt new. We met and watched and danced and ate and drank until the time had passed, and it had all come to an end. The heat turned us all into animals, and for a minute, the city was ours to roam. And at the end, I wondered if I would see them again, even with hazy plans set in place. Sometimes I did, sometimes I didn’t, and the goodbyes never felt sufficient.
And how could they ever be? I’m perpetually haunted by Cavafy’s lines from “The Afternoon Sun”:
. . . One afternoon at four o’clock we separated
for a week only. . . And then—
that week became forever.
How easily any week can turn into forever. Despite our plans, the world does what the world wants. Every time we leave could be the last time we see each other — this has always been true. All of the words for departing from another are prayers about the unknown that awaits us: goodbye comes from god be with ye, farewell hopes that the unknown holds safety, see you later manifests a return to another meeting together even if nothing is planned, even if it seems impossible. Don’t be a stranger, don’t forget the time we spent together, don’t let yourself be transformed into what you were before this, let us come together again.
In our departures, we hope for a return, but at the end of anything significant, I desire something like closure. We can never have this day back: how we got lost trying to find the water, how the light dappled the sidewalk through the leaves of the ginkgo trees. Can we really let this come to an end so unceremoniously? The sun will never be like this again, you might not remember any of it. And if you do, will you even remember it like I do? Will you remember me as I was, or how I am now, how I was before? While we still have this day, shouldn’t we try to cup it in our hands firmly but gently, hold it close as long as possible until it slips from our fingertips? Shouldn’t we let it come to an end with hugs tight enough to stop time, or take every picture imaginable, or do anything more than our small utterances?
But we don’t, I don’t. I can never cherish it enough at the time, only in the silence after. I try to write something down to remember the moments, I wonder if I’ll ever read it again, I sulk about the endings of all things and the ending of this month in the city. I walk through this entire last week in a bit of a haze, unable to sleep properly, somberly making fewer plans than usual. When did this city become so significant to me?
Everything becomes so beautiful in this retrospective misery, as if the long waits for the subway were anything more than an inconvenience. My heart warms seeing families on the train having loud conversations. I get giddy listening to a trumpeter’s cover of “City of Stars” from La La Land float over the park, even as he misses a few too many notes. The joy is depressing too, accompanied by the knowledge that all this will be far away from me soon enough.
I wish my goodbye could be grander, that I could fully represent how much I’ve grown attached to random parts of this city like the Blink Fitness where I had some of my best workouts in months, the coffee shop next to my sublet that makes decent coffee and incredible pastries, or the bowl place by my office that has a decent tofu bowl. I wish that simply writing about these places and the people that I’ve grown to adore would make it all feel less terrible, like there isn’t loss whenever you leave somewhere.
When I return to San Francisco this weekend, I will be different, my eyes unaccustomed to the overcast skies and the color filter they provide and stricken by grief from my leaving. I’ll have missed birthday parties of my friends, DJ sets of my friends, weeks of memories. But I’ll have grown — remade by my new experiences, by the care of all of the wonderful people I met and bid farewell to. And after all of these goodbyes, I will say hello to the Bay and all of those that make it home.
💧 Drops of the Week 💧
PLAYLIST - sunflwr moodring - I shazamed a DJ set I enjoyed this weekend and put it into a playlist
POEM - “In the Same Space” by CP Cavafy - The setting of houses, cafés, the neighborhood / that I’ve seen and walked through years on end
how are you so good at writing about time
love this!!!