Getting Lost and Slipping Side by Side

Haaaaaaa! Blahaghaghahgaghalreighakdhgeo!!!!! I am lost again! Whoosh! Packooooooooh! (explosion noise) Aaaaagh!

dust settles in four o'clock sunlight and then

Where am I?

Eyelashes bruise, bones crumple like foil. Coffee shop chatter drums in every pore, sirens bewail a thousand dying sighs. The world's present woe is dyed purple on this slide and magnified. And I am one email click away, one unfriendly glance, one lighthearted joke at my expense, one line note, one parental reprimand, one sweet memory, one tampon commercial, one Casablanca kiss away from tipping into tears.

Yes, it may be may be hormones. But I think, rather it is...

my GETTING-LOST-HIGH halting. Triggered, no doubt, by my parents leaving Boise today. Triggered, perhaps by our director's departure tomorrow-- who took a chance on a girl at a random New York audition--now onto her new adventure. Triggered, sure, by those I love whose pain I feel across the distance, not to mention the pain of distance. Triggered as time goes by--by the problems of three little people on TCM, kissing as if it were the last time--because they know it is.

By letting the wild and whirling moment subside into stillness.

Like Rick and Ilsa, I see a change is gonna come --not even a molehill of beans worth crying over yet little deaths that I feel as if they were my own, moments passing as if they were people or pets. Death, stillness slips me out of the moment. I will be living in it again soon, but for now--this very now--today, and perhaps just this minute--I am utterly and completely lost in all the cold and quiet mountains of beans in this crazy, dizzy world.

"Sit by my side and let the world slip. We shall ne'er be younger" (Shrew, Ind.2)

This Valentine's weekend, my parents came to Boise. We drove up to Bogus Basin and learned what it "might be like" to snowboard. We slipped and slid and bruised our bums. We laughed and ached and relished the speed and resistance of snow. We had no idea what to do but try, laugh, and fall. But best of all, by sharing this new period in my life, we created a new exciting, fleeting moment our lives. They experienced part of my life that no one but we will know and like skin growing over jointures, they are again part of my body.

Time is the MOST precious gift to give or be given--sharing time slipping; sharing places side by side.

"it stops me here; it is too much of joy" (Othello, 2.1.209)

Mourning for joy, for dying, for getting lost again (which is also to be found), for losing, for slipping--together and alone.