Goodnight moon

It was the last late-night drive home from Oakland. I did not have bridge toll because I am the type of procrastinator who can spend 2 months commuting from Marin to (pick a city that needs bridge toll to get there from here) without ever buying a Fastrak. It’s ok.

I sniffed out a good place to exit the freeway and find an ATM so I could get some cash. The U and the O were missing from the neon sign shouting “Liquor” underneath a canopy of some kind of Point Richmond greenery. My edges were feeling a bit fuzzy. I floated through the two aisles of packaged foods and alcohol, unnerved by some combination of the ending of my play, the ending of the day, and an unsettling cell phone conversation. One $2.00 ATM fee and a bag of Salt-and-Pepper chips later, I was back on the road, trailing some hopelessly lost old dude in a white coupe who had pulled over to ask for directions. Lucky for  him, this li’l midnight Subaru cowgirl was on her way to Marin, too. (He told me I was at risk for getting a merit badge in return for the kindness of letting him follow me, so watch out.) I turned the music up full blast and let Senor Iron and Wine gently rocka-my-soul all the way over the Richmond-San Rafael bridge and on home again.

There is something about saying goodbye at the end of the show. It is usually so disjointed, so anticlimactic. You are surrounded by the guts of the play you just breathed life into, the cables and wires and shirts and chairs and lights that somehow (we hope) had piled themselves all into a big twisted but organized mess of something that was Your Art.  Everyone seems so keen to Get The Fuck Outta Here, to pay tribute to the infamous gods of Go Home, for I must work in the morning, spoon with my already-sleeping boyfriend, make the long drive back tonight. Eat Salt-and-Pepper chips. (Because Salt-and Vinegar was just a little too intense for tonight and Mesquite BBQ seems like a daytime flavor.)

I cherish the goodbyes, though. There are so many of them in this life, and that pang of endings will die sad and alone behind your eyes if you don’t take an extra second to hug and kiss this moment goodbye. To try to imagine when we will see each other next. It is a big world out here, it isn’t college, which is one of the reasons this play was so fucking hard to pull off. And it is a lonely world too, because we will split off in our own directions and there is no all-governing University matrix to gently encase us and promise us a chance encounter. 

Part of the sadness I feel is because I will leave in 3 days to go off to my next adventure, and I will be isolated out there for a good 7 weeks, no email or whatnot.  And it has taken me until now to feel like I wasn’t just spinning my wheels here, not just biding my time and living rent-free with the parentals, but just Living, plain old regular.  I have people here who will miss me when I am gone, people whose walls I have just begun to crumble, and who have just started to be able to see me on the other side.  I kind of feel like this appreciation is impossible without leaving, but I don’t want to make this a habit.  People become addicted to this bittersweet feeling I have, the one right before you go, when nothing shitty seems important and all the good stuff rushes up and hugs you sweetly around the throat. 

I can’t leave just so I can enjoy goodbye, but I also can’t stay just because this make me sad.  When the next chapter wants a chance to begin, you just have let it.  New chapters only show up at the end of old ones, and if the old one didn’t seem quite finished yet, so be it.  God, it seems, is a modern novelist, somewhat unconcerned with continuity and more concerned with making this shit interesting. 

Beginnings hold such promise. Endings just hold you. There isn’t really a way to separate the two but sometimes we try anyway. Timing can play funny games with us, but I am past the point of resisting this.  I am grateful to Have Had, and I guess I am just going to have to put a little trust in the next thing, whatever that is. 

As I coasted over the last hill coming home, I saw a perfect storybook crescent moon, brighter than decency and gorgeous as can be.  The moon is so patient with us, never preaching, always just showing us by example that whatever it was (good or bad, half or whole or none at all) will come around again.