I always cry at endings, except today

Ooh! get me away from here I'm dying
Play me a song to set me free
Nobody writes them like they used to
So it may as well be me
Here on my own now after hours
Here on my own now on a bus
Think of it this way
You could either be successful or be us
With our winning smiles, and us
With our catchy tunes and words
Now were photogenic
You know, we don't stand a chance

Oh, I'll settle down with some old story
About a boy who's just like me
Thought there was love in everything and everyone
You're so naive!
They always reach a sorry ending
They always get it in the end
Still it was worth it as I turned the pages solemnly, and then
With a winning smile, the poor boy
With naivety succeeds
At the final moment, I cried
I always cry at endings

Oh, that wasn't what I meant to say at all
From where I'm sitting, rain
Falling against the lonely tenement
Has set my mind to wander
Into the windows of my lovers
They never know unless I write
This is no declaration, I just thought I'd let you know goodbye
Said the hero in the story
It is mightier than swords
I could kill you sure
But I could only make you cry with these words...................................................................................................................

(Sebastian, & the Belle)

closing time

It's been a long day. I didn't run or meditate or do anything of personal power except clean my room and eat half a chocolate chip muffin. Underneath the surface-layer-nothingness the past 24 hours have provided, it has yet been an intense day. A second to last day. A goodbye day. A day of reading thank you/congratulations/ see you later cards. And for all these reasons, I need the monotonous hum of something... be it my breath or a mantra or the slow guitar picking from the Be Good Tanyas on iTunes... just to get me back to a baseline from where I can think clearly.

And so I type.

"Though fairy tales end after ten pages, our lives do not. We are all multivolume sets. In our lives, even though one episode amounts to a crash and burn, there is always another episode awaiting us and then another. There are always more opportunities to get it right, to fashion our lives in the ways we deserve to have them. Don't waste our time hating a failure. Failure is a greater teacher than success. Listen, learn, go on."

And then the mmhmmm's start within me, and pulse from my diaphram past my heart and out my closed yet relaxed mouth - all inbetween great sighs.

The quote is from Women Who Run with the Wolves. It's the book that's saving my soul right now. Without these very fine words, I'd be swimming in a pool of bitterness, fear, and an overwhelming feeling of failure. It's a book about insticts. About following my wildish nature. About allowing my soul to cast out and see what it grabs without hooking onto a poisonous lure leading to questions of value and worth. (see previous posts.)

So I hum.

Tomorrow is my last day of work. I'll be packing up my files and closing up shop, leaving only what I can for the next lost soul to take on my position, if there ever will be such a person. No one but me will be in the center tomorrow, and it's procuring a profound memory of packing up my belongings in Michigan before I squeezed in my car and drove to the unknown. 2 years later, look at how things have changed.

In the last two days, I've confessed my departure to all the youth I've worked with in the past year. It's the kind of closure these young people deserve - and suddenly I realize why so many men never gave me the obvious gift, seeing as it is so hard. For one of the first times in speaking to these teens I had an impossible time looking them in the eyes. I had an even harder time keeping a steady voice with a simple sentence. Time stopped and shook like an earthquake, and my old-soul confidence fell to the floor as their faces drooped down with some tears.

They love me, and they hate me for going, and in my going I am taking away their programs, their efforts, their dreams and experiences of Home. And I hate reality. But the funds are cut. There's nothing else to do but say goodbye...

"There are always more opportunities to get it right, to fashion our lives in the ways we deserve to have them."

I'll lean on that for a bit, with one arm stretching south and embracing the space between me and my youth's tender, thoughtful hugs, and the other arm reaching to the future to a new position, with new youth and a level surface to build upon. So with these open arms, my heart calls out, "Would you rather me a hammer or a nail?"

I'm a nail. Not crushed. Used for a cause and a much bigger purpose. And I will go on humming, learning, casting myself out to a senseless and tempting world all in the name of getting to the next episode.

My my, July, July.

I might have to move my bed to a different position in my room. As it is now, cornered against the south-western walls, I can only wake up on one side of the bed. I think it's the wrong side.

So here is where the bitching and tilted head rambling of my ebbs and flows are poured out for your visual delight... it's a day where I can't pull myself far enough out of my own subjective experience to create a solid story line, so you'll have to deal with my mindless journaling, if you don't mind.

My my, July, July...

*crashed and burned with a douche-bag (#15,632?) all for the very best of course, but skid marks do take some time to heal.

*lost funding for my job. Although I'm young and trying to catch up with the rest of the world, I found being treated like a runt - fed from my agency's unreliable money trough until they could figure out what to do with my skills and assets - a little inhumane.

*3 weeks of back spasms.

*voyage to the motherland: a lot of reading, sun bathing, fishing, tv, drinking and eating, and conversing with my mother like 2 flint stones rubbing together.

*hired! Call me Teen Programs Coordinator. I'm a big shot. goodbye commuting, hello huge responsibility.

*backpacking Sierra National Forest, Lake Lillian Trail for 8 days. Holy.

*speeding ticket in Modesto.

*reading Women Who Run With The Wolves. Best book ever.

*fainted hard-core during acupuncture today. The practictioner thought I was having a seizure, so that's cool.

*caught by the MUNI police for having an expired transfer today.

*locked out of my apt today. I knew I was forgetting something.


Elliot Smith is telling me the worst part's almost over now. But that's what the MUNI cop lady told me too right before she handed me a $50 piece of paper. It seems the world can't decide if I should live happily ever after or rot within my sagging skin and bones. I wish it'd make up it's mind soon.

And I wish I could stop collecting my experiences in life by adding them to a list labeled "why my life is shit," but that is easier said than done. Perhaps it's time to overcompensate, get heavy into spiritual guidebooks and rediscover where I am in my Life/Death/Life cycles. I can lean a little harder on the advice my own students give me about growing up and moving on. I can cry, but cry passionately, which is the only real way to live.

...dadme la muerte que me falta...

...shatter my heart so a new room can be created for a Limitless Love...

.so I'll sing and shout and pray and hope. My, my, July, July. Bring me an August to get lost in.

last goodbye - Jeff Buckley

this is our last goodbye
i hate to feel the love between us die
but it's over
just hear this and then i'll go
you gave me more to live for
more than you'll ever know

this is our last embrace
must i dream and always see your face
why can't we overcome this wall
well, maybe it's just because i didn't know you at all

kiss me, please kiss me
but kiss me out of desire, babe, and not consolation
you know it makes me so angry 'cause i know that in time
i'll only make you cry, this is our last goodbye

did you say "no, this can't happen to me,"
and did you rush to the phone to call
was there a voice unkind in the back of your mind
saying maybe you didn't know him at all
you didn't know him at all, oh, you didn't know

well, the bells out in the church tower chime
burning clues into this heart of mine
thinking so hard on her soft eyes and the memories
offer signs that it's over... it's over

[.it all had to be said. so leave a message. i'm no longer here.]