There was a time that we were lovers,
through March, April and May.
I went home in the summer,
though I wished he had asked me to stay.
The ocean was very wide,
and it got in our way.
So I came back from the other side,
to see how much had changed...
The time we met;
The time he loved me;
Today.
He always was a gentle man.
He is a gentle man still.
He met me at the train station,
like he'd said that he will.
We had a long, awkward conversation,
head to head, eye to eye.
I had lost his heart some time ago.
I may never know why.
The time we met;
The time he loved me;
Goodbye.
Does he regret
the time he loved me
today- I promised I'll be okay,
so I'll be okay.
Though I loved him- Maybe I'll hear from him,
and I can be his friend,
who loved him.
The End.
Monday, August 27, 2018
Friday, August 24, 2018
The Brambleberry Walk
written two nights ago
The road from my new home into town is lined for several stretches on one side with thorny brambles and little growing bunches of blackberries. From the first day I was here, I tried picking and eating one or two experimentally. Today, I plucked small handfuls as I walked along, and found that many had grown soft and sweet and tasty. A couple of times, someone along the road has given me an odd look about it; someone laughed, someone asked weren't they good? And I felt I was being judged. I wonder if I am committing some faux-pas by "stealing" someone's berries. I don't know. I enjoy the forage, although not the judgement, which may be real or may be imaginary, as it so often is.
I ran some group games with my friends the other night, and got to enjoy their company, carefree and casual as it used to be, although the internet connection hosted on my phone does not support much, and several times the sound of the Jackbox game and all the voices just blended together into low screechy metal noise for several seconds until it jumped forward and began to update again. Still, it was fun. My housemate and host suggested a website I should visit to get a better deal on home broadband than I was able to find on my own, Just One Switch or something like that. I haven't called them yet though.
I am procrastinating on continuing my job search. I am anxious of failure and reluctant, highly tempted to just escape into socialising and play. I know the trap. I know the only thing for me is to set myself to the task and pursue it for as long as it takes. I still have my friends' support, of course. They are still willing to help me along with rewards, and my dear Samedi even mentioned that she would be willing to put a foot down and be firm with me if I needed that from someone. Perhaps I will enlist her. But then perhaps not yet. I am askitter and distracted, somewhere deep in my mind where I hardly even think it from moment to moment. I made my arrangements yesterday to meet Eoin again this Friday.
There is also the fact that I have been staying up late and often had a hard time staying awake before 2 PM or so. It is tempting to blame this on some species of jetlag, but it seems so characteristic of me when I'm in a position of stressful uncertainly that I feel that would be rather unfair. I make the walk through the bramble-sided path into town and back again, my mind mostly blank, the silence filled with podcasts or music. I begin to suspect that there is a roiling space somewhere were a hundred things lie waiting to be said, and perhaps I would feel better after I said them... only I am very reluctant to take the time to lie still and quest after that place, which may be difficult to find and painful to open. I think it will come open soon anyway.
Well then... I put to myself: Would it not be better for our meeting if I went there, opened the tense place and heard the messages there myself, so that I would know what they say and had some time to think over them before I face Eoin? I feel reluctant, and the reluctance feels similar to doubt, but I suspect it is only reluctance to do something difficult and uncomfortable. I sit typing in sticky clothes, worn for a couple of days. I could use a bath and a change. My bath, and the bathroom sinks here, have almost no water pressure. The custom in this house, apparently, is to run the hot water heater a little while and fill a bucket with water of a temperature which is comfortable, and run it over oneself with a measuring cup. It feels very quaint, very old-fashioned, in a way remniscient of my early childhood when I would sit in a bath and use a yoghurt container to pour water over my head in waves, or discover and delight in the trick of setting it so that it would form a sort of air seal and the water would stay in the upturned plastic tub, sitting on my head like a sea crown.
I did a load of laundry yesterday. Like many other things, that seems in some details delightfully old-fashioned. We have a dryer, but my house-mates usually hang their clothes to dry, avoiding the electrical drain. I followed suit, and hung remaining small garments in my bedroom, having run out of room I could reach on the line. I took them down today, surprised they were dry so soon, but content. I will see whether line drying makes them uncomfortable, and let that influence my attitude towards continuing to do my laundry this way.
I think a moment of my family. I hope they are well. I wonder what they would think of me, if they could see over my shoulder, a snapshot of the life I am living at just this moment. I wonder if they think of me at all much. Should they? I sigh. My mind feels heavy and confused, paralysed by the ready distractions in each direction from firm movement in each other direction. I'll set the water to warm. I may not be sure of anything else just now, but I can certainly use a bath.
The road from my new home into town is lined for several stretches on one side with thorny brambles and little growing bunches of blackberries. From the first day I was here, I tried picking and eating one or two experimentally. Today, I plucked small handfuls as I walked along, and found that many had grown soft and sweet and tasty. A couple of times, someone along the road has given me an odd look about it; someone laughed, someone asked weren't they good? And I felt I was being judged. I wonder if I am committing some faux-pas by "stealing" someone's berries. I don't know. I enjoy the forage, although not the judgement, which may be real or may be imaginary, as it so often is.
I ran some group games with my friends the other night, and got to enjoy their company, carefree and casual as it used to be, although the internet connection hosted on my phone does not support much, and several times the sound of the Jackbox game and all the voices just blended together into low screechy metal noise for several seconds until it jumped forward and began to update again. Still, it was fun. My housemate and host suggested a website I should visit to get a better deal on home broadband than I was able to find on my own, Just One Switch or something like that. I haven't called them yet though.
I am procrastinating on continuing my job search. I am anxious of failure and reluctant, highly tempted to just escape into socialising and play. I know the trap. I know the only thing for me is to set myself to the task and pursue it for as long as it takes. I still have my friends' support, of course. They are still willing to help me along with rewards, and my dear Samedi even mentioned that she would be willing to put a foot down and be firm with me if I needed that from someone. Perhaps I will enlist her. But then perhaps not yet. I am askitter and distracted, somewhere deep in my mind where I hardly even think it from moment to moment. I made my arrangements yesterday to meet Eoin again this Friday.
There is also the fact that I have been staying up late and often had a hard time staying awake before 2 PM or so. It is tempting to blame this on some species of jetlag, but it seems so characteristic of me when I'm in a position of stressful uncertainly that I feel that would be rather unfair. I make the walk through the bramble-sided path into town and back again, my mind mostly blank, the silence filled with podcasts or music. I begin to suspect that there is a roiling space somewhere were a hundred things lie waiting to be said, and perhaps I would feel better after I said them... only I am very reluctant to take the time to lie still and quest after that place, which may be difficult to find and painful to open. I think it will come open soon anyway.
Well then... I put to myself: Would it not be better for our meeting if I went there, opened the tense place and heard the messages there myself, so that I would know what they say and had some time to think over them before I face Eoin? I feel reluctant, and the reluctance feels similar to doubt, but I suspect it is only reluctance to do something difficult and uncomfortable. I sit typing in sticky clothes, worn for a couple of days. I could use a bath and a change. My bath, and the bathroom sinks here, have almost no water pressure. The custom in this house, apparently, is to run the hot water heater a little while and fill a bucket with water of a temperature which is comfortable, and run it over oneself with a measuring cup. It feels very quaint, very old-fashioned, in a way remniscient of my early childhood when I would sit in a bath and use a yoghurt container to pour water over my head in waves, or discover and delight in the trick of setting it so that it would form a sort of air seal and the water would stay in the upturned plastic tub, sitting on my head like a sea crown.
I did a load of laundry yesterday. Like many other things, that seems in some details delightfully old-fashioned. We have a dryer, but my house-mates usually hang their clothes to dry, avoiding the electrical drain. I followed suit, and hung remaining small garments in my bedroom, having run out of room I could reach on the line. I took them down today, surprised they were dry so soon, but content. I will see whether line drying makes them uncomfortable, and let that influence my attitude towards continuing to do my laundry this way.
I think a moment of my family. I hope they are well. I wonder what they would think of me, if they could see over my shoulder, a snapshot of the life I am living at just this moment. I wonder if they think of me at all much. Should they? I sigh. My mind feels heavy and confused, paralysed by the ready distractions in each direction from firm movement in each other direction. I'll set the water to warm. I may not be sure of anything else just now, but I can certainly use a bath.
Sunday, August 19, 2018
Dear Memory: Travel Diary
Wednesday 15th, August 2018
Dear Memory:
Today I set out. My bags are packed; They are heavy.
My body is tired, my way long since decided.
Before me there is only to go a long way for a very long day,
full of pulling heavy bags and full of waiting.
But I come today, across land and sky, across the sea I come toward you.
What will happen now?
~~~~~
At London Greyhound: 1:18 PM
Cabin bag 12 kg or 26 lb: 35.75 lb
Checked bag 20 kg or 44 lb:79.65 49 lb
I packed too much for my voyage. Both my large bags were beyond the weight allowance my flight would grant me, and one was too much even for the bus. Feeling numb and imperative more than regretful, I ripped content out of the heaviest bag, and gave it over to a lady at the Greyhound counter, to be brought to lost and found, and eventually to be donated away. My D&D books, the first I ever owned, were thus sent away. I had decided against selling them, in a fit of sentimentality. Two swimming suits; and my old laptop, now replaced; and tablet seldom used. There is enough personal information on the one, probably, to steal my identity, if poor luck put it in hands that would. But it was with only the grim swiftness of a decision that must be made without hesitation, even if it must be made in error.
My wrist aches from writing on this pad, but I will to tell the story, so I write. I must pull more weight again from both my bags before I fly. Clothes, mostly, I will prefer to consent to abandon. Perhaps a book, and some toiletries if need be. The bus sets out, and I sit in it, as quiet and grim as an inevitable. I do not grieve. I follow my course.
At Pearson International Airport: 5:14 PM
The airport is confusing to navigate and lacks enough available information assistance for a traveler to find someone at hand to unconfuse it for them. However, I have taken this path before, and in the place where visual cues call back to the former experience, I remember enough to make my way more confidently. I left myself ample time, which helped. I did not need to hurry.
In a little heap behind a check-in gate, I left an array of belongings which I have cherished in their time. A stack of old CDs including the game Wolf was left along with clothes laboriously repaired and fondly worn. My broad hat. My grey rain jacket. The faceless rabbit, my companion since before London, when I rescued it from a Christmas drive it was too handmade to serve, was left there on the floor to be tidied away where the airport staff might put it. Perhaps to landfill. My box of dice stayed in my big suitcase to go with me.
These choices may sting, but in truth, I would go and leave everything if I must. It would likely even be easier than choosing which and what to consign away to the blind world which knows none of the stories of these things. Most of the elements of my shrine were left at home, to whoever would live there after me. The musical jewelry box and the fierce red bull sit on a bookshelf to be adopted or admired or discarded, and an empty waxen skull sits on a dead mantle long closed to any use of a real hearthfire, grinning over a basement den, for as long as it is left there. I kissed its crown one last time in reverence before I left. I go, seeking my dreams more boldly perhaps than ever I have... or then, maybe not, given the many journeys I have taken. But I go, and fulfil the promise I made by that candle gloriously.
I treasured these things, but mostly I treasure the memories carried on them. I leave much behind, but it is with a heart willing, and the abandonment of old relics helps me to feel new. They are only things, and I would give up more than I have for the sake of my friendships, which are greater; or just for my freedom, which is also greater. If I had to.
My flight should board soon.
At Keflavik Airport: 4:33 AM local time
My phone's clock reads 12:33. My headset has begun, while on the flight, to lose its strength in the wires by the speaker jack. Like the last one, the bundle of tiny wires inside must have twisted enough to sever almost all of them. I sit and write in a beautifully white bathroom where every stall has its own sink, and a door with no substantial gap underneath it. I was driven there largely by a keen and self-conscious awareness that I smell of menstruation. Probably, it is mainly a function of having worn the same clothes for so many hours in succession, having had to sit still in one spot for so long.
I remember that I meant to look up the phone number of my contact at the house where there is a room waiting for me on Ashfield St. A repeated announcement calls out in some English and some Icelandic for someone with a name that, to me, only sounds a bit like "alien saucepan".
I am tired. It has been too much dull restraint now to feel any glory, or at least any but slight occasional flickers, at my imminent and ongoing return. I did still enjoy the thrill of my last plane building up speed for the great rush that would lift it off the ground, after so long being teased by occasional accelerations that were only to taxi out to our designated runway.
I am tired from sitting still. From enduring the child behind me kicking my seat. From turning aside my thoughts when they wandered to the emergency door near me, and the long scream and fatal drop that could lie beyond. Or contemplated death in a crash, or in the sea in some emergency. I am more than half way through the part of my journey involving flight. I look forward to sleep, on a soft bed somewhere distant. After that, I will be able to begin to take on the tasks of my return and settling in.
At Ashfield, Carlow: 4 PM, Thursday 16, August 2018
I am here. The cool air greets me welcomely. The trees in their robes of ivy and all the walls and farmland look beautiful to me. The wind blows rain like seaspray and clouds like quickly passing crowds. All smells of sea and soil and, slightly, horses. My host met me and tried to help me see where things were. Gave me my keys and a lift to town, to Aldi where I bought some pillows and food.
Saturday 18th, August 2018
I type up the handwritten notes of my journey. It is about a quarter to four in the morning, in my little bright bedroom on the second floor of a neat little house in Ashfield. Not Ashfield St, for that is not quite how things are here. Ashfield is a neighborhood. A little expansion of duplex houses, pretty much all looking the same, and with a little road winding between them.
I am tired, and think I may sleep after this typing. I have slept mostly in evening, up until midnight, so far, and then again in the morning after an interim few hours of midnight activity. So shall it be today, although I mean to rouse myself earlier today than yesterday from my morning nap. I'll hope to seek out some place to access internet, post this blog, talk to my friends... and see whether I have yet any word from my Dear Memory, to whom I left a message: "I am back".
Perhaps I will ask my housemates to take me into town. Maybe to the library, or the grocery. It is hard, but I must constantly remind myself that during the morning, those friends I know best will not be around. The time zone difference would make it deep night for them, when they should be sleeping.
I have learned over the past day that I will need to find a job offer and then a PPS number, in order to take work in Ireland. I should go to Intereo for the number after I have an offer, with my passport, and a proof of address, and a letter of offer. I might open a bank account once I have a proof of address or student ID card.
I have rediscovered that in Ireland, candy tastes better. I remembered thinking this, but the substance of it does not really ring clear until the difference between flavours is in one's mouth again. I bought a couple of sticks of red licorice twist from a convenience store at the near edge of town, where I stopped to look around and speak to the lady behind the counter and ask if I might leave my CV there, once I've prepared one. Yes. And I did not eat the licorice for some time, but carried it in my bag and carried on my way. But it is so full of flavour, like red soda and some kind of delicious fruit. By comparison, a lot of candy from Canada tastes of almost nothing but stale sugar. I might well wind up stopping by Hegarty's to buy a small amount of candy fairly often. The open sweet bins behind the counter are delightfully nostalgic to me of the penny and dime candies at the gas station back in Killaloe. My Killaloe, the little village of my childhood.
My mind wanders to all manner of fantasy over you, my Dear Memory. I imagine meeting, over and over. I imagine singing to you. I imagine lying next to you, on grass under a tree, or in bed to sleep. I imagine asking you demurely a vast array of happy little invitations. I wonder that I ever felt muted in my feelings toward you. I have felt giddy and romantic and happy and suspenseful, and surprisingly little worried.
Typing up my notes here, I had the opportunity to now process the little feelings of loss at the property I have left behind. Feel a pang of anxiety over the accounts my old laptop may have still been signed in to. A little twinge of sadness over my old beloved D&D books, kept with me for 12 years, and the faceless rabbit doll, and a computer game that meant a lot to me as a very young child, and which I wonder to myself whether it can be found online. What is done is done, however, and I would not reverse it, though I do feel the loss. An the serpent sheds its skin it is cleaner and shinier, but also more naked and perhaps vulnerable for a time in softer scales not yet grown thick with scars.
Dear Memory:
Today I set out. My bags are packed; They are heavy.
My body is tired, my way long since decided.
Before me there is only to go a long way for a very long day,
full of pulling heavy bags and full of waiting.
But I come today, across land and sky, across the sea I come toward you.
What will happen now?
~~~~~
At London Greyhound: 1:18 PM
Cabin bag 12 kg or 26 lb: 35.75 lb
Checked bag 20 kg or 44 lb:
I packed too much for my voyage. Both my large bags were beyond the weight allowance my flight would grant me, and one was too much even for the bus. Feeling numb and imperative more than regretful, I ripped content out of the heaviest bag, and gave it over to a lady at the Greyhound counter, to be brought to lost and found, and eventually to be donated away. My D&D books, the first I ever owned, were thus sent away. I had decided against selling them, in a fit of sentimentality. Two swimming suits; and my old laptop, now replaced; and tablet seldom used. There is enough personal information on the one, probably, to steal my identity, if poor luck put it in hands that would. But it was with only the grim swiftness of a decision that must be made without hesitation, even if it must be made in error.
My wrist aches from writing on this pad, but I will to tell the story, so I write. I must pull more weight again from both my bags before I fly. Clothes, mostly, I will prefer to consent to abandon. Perhaps a book, and some toiletries if need be. The bus sets out, and I sit in it, as quiet and grim as an inevitable. I do not grieve. I follow my course.
At Pearson International Airport: 5:14 PM
The airport is confusing to navigate and lacks enough available information assistance for a traveler to find someone at hand to unconfuse it for them. However, I have taken this path before, and in the place where visual cues call back to the former experience, I remember enough to make my way more confidently. I left myself ample time, which helped. I did not need to hurry.
In a little heap behind a check-in gate, I left an array of belongings which I have cherished in their time. A stack of old CDs including the game Wolf was left along with clothes laboriously repaired and fondly worn. My broad hat. My grey rain jacket. The faceless rabbit, my companion since before London, when I rescued it from a Christmas drive it was too handmade to serve, was left there on the floor to be tidied away where the airport staff might put it. Perhaps to landfill. My box of dice stayed in my big suitcase to go with me.
These choices may sting, but in truth, I would go and leave everything if I must. It would likely even be easier than choosing which and what to consign away to the blind world which knows none of the stories of these things. Most of the elements of my shrine were left at home, to whoever would live there after me. The musical jewelry box and the fierce red bull sit on a bookshelf to be adopted or admired or discarded, and an empty waxen skull sits on a dead mantle long closed to any use of a real hearthfire, grinning over a basement den, for as long as it is left there. I kissed its crown one last time in reverence before I left. I go, seeking my dreams more boldly perhaps than ever I have... or then, maybe not, given the many journeys I have taken. But I go, and fulfil the promise I made by that candle gloriously.
I treasured these things, but mostly I treasure the memories carried on them. I leave much behind, but it is with a heart willing, and the abandonment of old relics helps me to feel new. They are only things, and I would give up more than I have for the sake of my friendships, which are greater; or just for my freedom, which is also greater. If I had to.
My flight should board soon.
At Keflavik Airport: 4:33 AM local time
My phone's clock reads 12:33. My headset has begun, while on the flight, to lose its strength in the wires by the speaker jack. Like the last one, the bundle of tiny wires inside must have twisted enough to sever almost all of them. I sit and write in a beautifully white bathroom where every stall has its own sink, and a door with no substantial gap underneath it. I was driven there largely by a keen and self-conscious awareness that I smell of menstruation. Probably, it is mainly a function of having worn the same clothes for so many hours in succession, having had to sit still in one spot for so long.
I remember that I meant to look up the phone number of my contact at the house where there is a room waiting for me on Ashfield St. A repeated announcement calls out in some English and some Icelandic for someone with a name that, to me, only sounds a bit like "alien saucepan".
I am tired. It has been too much dull restraint now to feel any glory, or at least any but slight occasional flickers, at my imminent and ongoing return. I did still enjoy the thrill of my last plane building up speed for the great rush that would lift it off the ground, after so long being teased by occasional accelerations that were only to taxi out to our designated runway.
I am tired from sitting still. From enduring the child behind me kicking my seat. From turning aside my thoughts when they wandered to the emergency door near me, and the long scream and fatal drop that could lie beyond. Or contemplated death in a crash, or in the sea in some emergency. I am more than half way through the part of my journey involving flight. I look forward to sleep, on a soft bed somewhere distant. After that, I will be able to begin to take on the tasks of my return and settling in.
At Ashfield, Carlow: 4 PM, Thursday 16, August 2018
I am here. The cool air greets me welcomely. The trees in their robes of ivy and all the walls and farmland look beautiful to me. The wind blows rain like seaspray and clouds like quickly passing crowds. All smells of sea and soil and, slightly, horses. My host met me and tried to help me see where things were. Gave me my keys and a lift to town, to Aldi where I bought some pillows and food.
Saturday 18th, August 2018
I type up the handwritten notes of my journey. It is about a quarter to four in the morning, in my little bright bedroom on the second floor of a neat little house in Ashfield. Not Ashfield St, for that is not quite how things are here. Ashfield is a neighborhood. A little expansion of duplex houses, pretty much all looking the same, and with a little road winding between them.
I am tired, and think I may sleep after this typing. I have slept mostly in evening, up until midnight, so far, and then again in the morning after an interim few hours of midnight activity. So shall it be today, although I mean to rouse myself earlier today than yesterday from my morning nap. I'll hope to seek out some place to access internet, post this blog, talk to my friends... and see whether I have yet any word from my Dear Memory, to whom I left a message: "I am back".
Perhaps I will ask my housemates to take me into town. Maybe to the library, or the grocery. It is hard, but I must constantly remind myself that during the morning, those friends I know best will not be around. The time zone difference would make it deep night for them, when they should be sleeping.
I have learned over the past day that I will need to find a job offer and then a PPS number, in order to take work in Ireland. I should go to Intereo for the number after I have an offer, with my passport, and a proof of address, and a letter of offer. I might open a bank account once I have a proof of address or student ID card.
I have rediscovered that in Ireland, candy tastes better. I remembered thinking this, but the substance of it does not really ring clear until the difference between flavours is in one's mouth again. I bought a couple of sticks of red licorice twist from a convenience store at the near edge of town, where I stopped to look around and speak to the lady behind the counter and ask if I might leave my CV there, once I've prepared one. Yes. And I did not eat the licorice for some time, but carried it in my bag and carried on my way. But it is so full of flavour, like red soda and some kind of delicious fruit. By comparison, a lot of candy from Canada tastes of almost nothing but stale sugar. I might well wind up stopping by Hegarty's to buy a small amount of candy fairly often. The open sweet bins behind the counter are delightfully nostalgic to me of the penny and dime candies at the gas station back in Killaloe. My Killaloe, the little village of my childhood.
My mind wanders to all manner of fantasy over you, my Dear Memory. I imagine meeting, over and over. I imagine singing to you. I imagine lying next to you, on grass under a tree, or in bed to sleep. I imagine asking you demurely a vast array of happy little invitations. I wonder that I ever felt muted in my feelings toward you. I have felt giddy and romantic and happy and suspenseful, and surprisingly little worried.
Typing up my notes here, I had the opportunity to now process the little feelings of loss at the property I have left behind. Feel a pang of anxiety over the accounts my old laptop may have still been signed in to. A little twinge of sadness over my old beloved D&D books, kept with me for 12 years, and the faceless rabbit doll, and a computer game that meant a lot to me as a very young child, and which I wonder to myself whether it can be found online. What is done is done, however, and I would not reverse it, though I do feel the loss. An the serpent sheds its skin it is cleaner and shinier, but also more naked and perhaps vulnerable for a time in softer scales not yet grown thick with scars.
Tuesday, August 7, 2018
Dear Memory: Volume 2
Good evening.
You have been often on my thoughts. Only natural, I suppose. I do not know, quite, when I am to meet you. You have already been told, given that it was not practical to have our first meeting immediately as I was in the country, that I will wait until my arrival to arrange it. You judged it reasonable.
As the day draws near, the need to have a place to stay becomes more urgent. That, though, pales in comparison. I have spent the last week or so kind of out of sorts, feeling antisocial, bored, tired. It may have been partly the after-effects of a minor cold, or possibly of failing to notice a missed day of my medicine. It has not prevented me from getting anything done, however. I finished the essential part of sewing up my backpack. It is, although not as thoroughly secured and finished as I want it to be, ready to be used. I redoubled my efforts contacting landlords who might rent to me, and have several conversations going with regard of potential places. Two of my friends agreed to come and move furniture for me, to set up a yard sale. Another from out of town asked to meet with me briefly before I go, and I agreed.
I am on my last week of work. My direct supervisor has praised me over several times, for being a good and energetic worker. Proactive, reliable. Last week, I found and returned a ring that had been lost on one of the shuttlebuses when we were cleaning them, and I was given a card and little reward for it.
For the past couple of weeks, I have occasionally stayed behind after my shift to play piano, for there are instruments at various places throughout the building, and some of real old wooden make, with the soulful sound of an organic, resonant thing responding to my touch. It has been a long time since I had convenient access to such an opportunity to practice my playing. I am rusty. However, with a half an hour here and there, I have been able to reclaim a great deal of my elegance, if not my memory of specific songs. Several people have complimented my playing.
All this is procrastination. It is... details. I came to write here today because I thought... maybe... it would help my temper at work, and allow me to sleep a bit better at night, if... If I...
If I admit here, openly in writing, that I am afraid you will reject me.
There. It is said.
Although I have no particular reason to expect you to, and although I have coached myself on every fancy that I must accept whatever answer you give, I am nevertheless afraid. Although I have prepared to move on confidently, with the condolences and support of several dear friends, and the necessity of looking after myself by earning my keep in the more expensive environment to which I go... Perhaps I will sleep more soundly if I have confessed here that for all my preparation, I do care. I do have hopes, and they stand at risk of being disappointed. I do wish... and with a power that makes all this that I have done, to arrange for myself to come back across the ocean to see you again seem perfectly in line, not excessive. I want to share fondness with you again. I want to be permitted to love you again.
The time I spent in Ireland makes a grand story. If it is, as I have at least once named it, like a story that makes all that came before only a prequel, then the time since October has been another very worthy story in the series, and frankly one much better documented within its own time. But I could not have written everything I have felt, all the times I have thought of you. They have been too numerous. I could not have written all the different things I have felt, or believed myself to feel. There have been long weeks of distraction that I did not write at all. There have been weeks I myself have forgotten.
This second volume, second story within the series that follows the arc of you and your impact on my life, present or not, must be drawing to a close. Its content has been doubt, and the coping with doubt, and learning how to respect doubt and carry it healthily and act confidently despite it. Doubt must soon come to an end, and I have been feeling the tension building gradually around me, the thrill of coming closer and closer to the climax of the story, the resolution of the doubt, the answer to the mystery. How it plays out, I do not yet know, but I know that I am nearing the final pages, and feel that however it is this story ends, however the doubt ends... My memory will be watching, and the memory of it must surely be keenly felt and remembered as the next story, whatever its shape may be after this, begins.
The tension is killing me, and my heart is cheering for a happy ending as the days lurch and drag. Two and a half weeks. Two weeks. A week and a day now, and I find that I am imagining talking to you at all sorts of idle moments. The tension is killing me, but so sweetly poignantly that I could have no objection.
You have been often on my thoughts. Only natural, I suppose. I do not know, quite, when I am to meet you. You have already been told, given that it was not practical to have our first meeting immediately as I was in the country, that I will wait until my arrival to arrange it. You judged it reasonable.
As the day draws near, the need to have a place to stay becomes more urgent. That, though, pales in comparison. I have spent the last week or so kind of out of sorts, feeling antisocial, bored, tired. It may have been partly the after-effects of a minor cold, or possibly of failing to notice a missed day of my medicine. It has not prevented me from getting anything done, however. I finished the essential part of sewing up my backpack. It is, although not as thoroughly secured and finished as I want it to be, ready to be used. I redoubled my efforts contacting landlords who might rent to me, and have several conversations going with regard of potential places. Two of my friends agreed to come and move furniture for me, to set up a yard sale. Another from out of town asked to meet with me briefly before I go, and I agreed.
I am on my last week of work. My direct supervisor has praised me over several times, for being a good and energetic worker. Proactive, reliable. Last week, I found and returned a ring that had been lost on one of the shuttlebuses when we were cleaning them, and I was given a card and little reward for it.
For the past couple of weeks, I have occasionally stayed behind after my shift to play piano, for there are instruments at various places throughout the building, and some of real old wooden make, with the soulful sound of an organic, resonant thing responding to my touch. It has been a long time since I had convenient access to such an opportunity to practice my playing. I am rusty. However, with a half an hour here and there, I have been able to reclaim a great deal of my elegance, if not my memory of specific songs. Several people have complimented my playing.
All this is procrastination. It is... details. I came to write here today because I thought... maybe... it would help my temper at work, and allow me to sleep a bit better at night, if... If I...
If I admit here, openly in writing, that I am afraid you will reject me.
There. It is said.
Although I have no particular reason to expect you to, and although I have coached myself on every fancy that I must accept whatever answer you give, I am nevertheless afraid. Although I have prepared to move on confidently, with the condolences and support of several dear friends, and the necessity of looking after myself by earning my keep in the more expensive environment to which I go... Perhaps I will sleep more soundly if I have confessed here that for all my preparation, I do care. I do have hopes, and they stand at risk of being disappointed. I do wish... and with a power that makes all this that I have done, to arrange for myself to come back across the ocean to see you again seem perfectly in line, not excessive. I want to share fondness with you again. I want to be permitted to love you again.
The time I spent in Ireland makes a grand story. If it is, as I have at least once named it, like a story that makes all that came before only a prequel, then the time since October has been another very worthy story in the series, and frankly one much better documented within its own time. But I could not have written everything I have felt, all the times I have thought of you. They have been too numerous. I could not have written all the different things I have felt, or believed myself to feel. There have been long weeks of distraction that I did not write at all. There have been weeks I myself have forgotten.
This second volume, second story within the series that follows the arc of you and your impact on my life, present or not, must be drawing to a close. Its content has been doubt, and the coping with doubt, and learning how to respect doubt and carry it healthily and act confidently despite it. Doubt must soon come to an end, and I have been feeling the tension building gradually around me, the thrill of coming closer and closer to the climax of the story, the resolution of the doubt, the answer to the mystery. How it plays out, I do not yet know, but I know that I am nearing the final pages, and feel that however it is this story ends, however the doubt ends... My memory will be watching, and the memory of it must surely be keenly felt and remembered as the next story, whatever its shape may be after this, begins.
The tension is killing me, and my heart is cheering for a happy ending as the days lurch and drag. Two and a half weeks. Two weeks. A week and a day now, and I find that I am imagining talking to you at all sorts of idle moments. The tension is killing me, but so sweetly poignantly that I could have no objection.
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