Time's Shabby Curtains

"Amid death and groaning wooden power and the wet complexity of moss and fungus and vines - from the same solemn pit, silliness pops up to dangle its tassles. Jamie. Alain. Joanne. We all came up out of the ground and took our forms. So much harder to have a form because we have one on the outside and too many inside. Depth, surface, power, fragility, direction, indirection, arrogance, servility, rocks, roots, grass, blossoms, dirt. We are a tangle of roots, a young branch, a flower, a moldy spore. You want to say, This is me; this is who I am. But you don't even know what it is, or what it's for.

Time parts its shabby curtain: There is my father, listening to his music hard enough to break his own heart. Trying to borrow shapes for his emotions so that he may hold them out to the world and the world might say, Yes, we see. We feel. We understand. I touch the hazelnut bush gently as I pass." - Mary Gaitskill, Veronica

It is always hard to end chapters in your life. You find yourself stubbornly clinging to all the good bits, afraid to let them go, blind to the decay and the signs warning you that you have reached the end of the road.

When you get to the end you always wonder why you bothered to make the journey in the first place, it is so painful and sad when all is said and done - but later, as time parts its shabby curtain, it dawns on you that you were just being human, desperately trying to connect and reach out and gain understanding. And even if you failed miserably, at least you are one of the many human beings still throwing your lot in with the rest, wordlessly hoping that eventually you will find a road that leads you to a good long respite.