EPTI came in quietly, emptied my pockets and went to my room. I finished the last 10 or so minutes of Quantum of Solace because I was watching it before I left. Remember the part where he's waiting in the dark for Vespa's old boyfriend? He finally finds what he's looking for. Somehow it made more sense to me.
I looked out the window through one of my blinds that doesn't sit right and saw a light reflecting off water. It gathers into a stream at the side of the street and goes wherever it goes. I could see the little rain indents on it too.
I'm gonna miss this place. I have friends here. I don't feel like I need an adjective, like good friends or great friends, it goes deeper than that. They're just my friends, and that means more than any other way I can put it. It's over, and tonight the only direction I can look is back.
My throat is locking up again. I read somewhere that writing only comes from true emotion. Actually I think saved the quote, I'll dig it up
Take the case of José Saramago, the first Portuguese-language writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature. The son of a peasant father and an illiterate mother, brought up in a home with no books, he took almost 40 years to go from metalworker to civil servant to editor in a publishing house to newspaper editor. He was 60 before he earned recognition at home and abroad with Baltasar and Blimunda.
As a child, he spent vacations with his grandparents in a village called Azinhaga. When his grandfather suffered a stroke and was to be taken to Lisbon for treatment, Saramago recalls, "He went into the yard of his house, where there were a few trees, fig trees, olive trees. And he went one by one, embracing the trees and crying, saying good-bye to them because he knew he would not return. To see this, to live this, if that doesn’t mark you for the rest of your life," Saramago says, "you have no feeling."
As a child, he spent vacations with his grandparents in a village called Azinhaga. When his grandfather suffered a stroke and was to be taken to Lisbon for treatment, Saramago recalls, "He went into the yard of his house, where there were a few trees, fig trees, olive trees. And he went one by one, embracing the trees and crying, saying good-bye to them because he knew he would not return. To see this, to live this, if that doesn’t mark you for the rest of your life," Saramago says, "you have no feeling."
To shape the small moments and currents of life into words is a beautiful thing. To be struck by a tragedy or other loss is a cathartic experience, you can simply focus on the feeling formed inside yourself and bask in it. But where it comes from
How can you be alone with such feelings. This is the hidden cost of being accepting and welcoming of change. The worth of something only becomes apparent when you lose it. I really wish it were thundering so I could send my thoughts to a higher power I can't comprehend.
Just imagine, tomorrow, you were going to lose it all. All the different little whirring, ticking moments of your life. The ones you like and the ones you don't. All gone. Would you care? I do. I keep telling myself its amazing how far I've come, but I can't stop from going around to my fig trees and olive trees. It's not the first time, and its not the last...but there are some things repetition doesn't dull. In fact, sometimes it sharpens.
