endings eat id To have so many endings upon you in one year, you'd think that beginnings would feel rather natural. After all, an ending always brings upon a beginning - isn't that the way of things? 060219 ... unhinged but it's easier to focus on things that will never be again than things that possibly could be, maybe, if you're lucky. 060219 ... Jarec Endings and beginnings have much in common. They both are rather arbitrary points that may not even exist at all, disregarding reference to trivial moments of life, such as working on the clock. Anything important rarely occurs within a specific, preordained frame of time. They provide both a sense of wonder and anxiety to those who believe they bear their witness. They both tend to be highly emotional, which I believe reflects people's inconsistent views on their mortality. Blather is a perfect extension of my beliefs. 060227 ... Arwyn beginnings endings like fairy tales no. not fairy tales. fallacies and lies I seek truth I long for closure 080603 ... tender_square when_it_s_right, i_will_pull_my_ribs_apart, heal_the_most_broken_of_parts. back_to_the_newest_drawing_board, golden_wisp_in_time; registering_shifts_of_feeling in_a_sprinkle_of_stars. is_there_a_next_step? the_underside_of_your_story, what_you_were_and_what_you_are: silence_and_song. what_else_can_we_do_but_write? rip_out_the_last_page. 220201 ... tender_square (correction: when_it's_right) 220201 ... raze (that top line should link now) 220201 ... epitome of incomprehensibility Gauh! (a vocalization of admiration/surprise). Yesterday, when I wrote my collage_poem, I hadn't seen yet that you were up to similar shenanigans. Which are actually makesensigans, since this is beautiful. And also cool to see the double linckage thing - what raze wrote on when_it_was_right. 220202 ... e_o_i corrects linkage, even. 220202 ... tender_square the daughter kept avoiding eye contact with the waitress whenever she came by to check on her and her mother, not that she could even really see her shape in detail through her blurred eyes. the daughter and her mother had chosen a dark booth in the back corner for greater privacy, knowing tears would be in their party of two. “why did it end between you and him the first time?” “he made the decision for me. he stopped talking to me.” “mom, i’m so sorry.” “he ignored all my texts, my emails, my phone calls. he would not respond. he was going through a difficult period in his life at that time and i worried he could be capable of hurting himself. it didn’t matter what i said to him, how i phrased it, he would not reply to me.” the daughter was surprised by her mother’s resilience as she continued to speak. “i went through worry and anger and heartbreak for a full year. then, one day i saw him in the parking lot of a grocery store, he didn’t see me. and when i reached out to him then, he responded.” “did he ever say why he did that to you?” “he said it was because he wanted more. and he never pressured me to make any decision, but he could see how heartbreaking it was for me to consider leaving your father, and so he did me the kindness of taking himself out of the equation.” the daughter reached for her mother’s hands across the honey wood table and held them in hers. “i didn’t realize how selfish i was being. so much of my life was about caring for others, and being with him was something that i finally did for myself. and i loved it because he gave me joy and it was mine. he didn’t want to fall in love with me; married women were his thing because he could always get out of it. but i had changed that and it became too much for him.” the mother withdrew her hands, picked up her fork and poked at her salad. “never discount the pain you could be causing someone else.” “i think about that all the time.” the daughter pulled a tissue from her purse to wipe her eyes. “why did it start up again three years after the first time?” “we were friends. we had been meeting up for an occasional dinner. and then we fell back into the way we were. but he said to me, ‘why can’t i have what you have? i go out with couples and i can’t do that because we have to stay hidden. why can’t i have what you have?’ and i realized that it was unfair for me to expect him to be monogamous. and so he was seeing other women; there was one in her fifties, but she didn’t like his motorcycle and that was a deal breaker for him. then i think he went through a mid-life crisis because the women kept getting younger and younger. and at the end of it he was with a twenty-two year old and i said to him, ‘i’m in my sixties and i am not competing with that.’ he tried to dismiss it, saying that it was different because he wanted me, but i just couldn’t do it anymore.” her mother sipped her virgin caesar. “make no mistake, your husband knows that there’s something wrong, that there’s this third thing in your marriage because he knows you. you dad knew but was too afraid to ask; he didn’t want to know the truth.” 220226 ... tender_square “you mentioned his book,” her therapist said. “what did you think of it?” “it’s great, except for the ending,” she said. “he had said that he hadn’t felt like he was in a good place when he was writing it, and that’s apparent to me now.” “what’s wrong with it?” “i don’t know how to describe it exactly. there’s a lack of feeling present. whatever tension had been woven throughout the book had slackened. it’s too tidy.” “it strikes me that there’s something about that," her therapist considered. "he doesn’t quite know how to let things end.” 220322 ... tender_square they turned a corner into the sunlight as he said, “you didn’t ask me about my writing today.” “oh?” she was surprised that he wanted her inquiry. “i didn’t realize you had done it with all the errands you were running this morning.” “no, i did.” “so,” the word dragged from her mouth. “how’d it go?” “it was kind of emotional.” for a man who worked with words he offered few of them to her. was he purposefully opaque to her or only to himself? “emotional how?” then she rephrased the line of questioning. “can you tell me more or will that compromise the ending? is it about the actual ending or about composing the ending?” “no, i still don’t know what literally happens,” he conceded. “but i’m close. it was just this feeling of heaviness, of all that i’ve been through,” he tried to explain. “like i was thinking about everything that has culminated to this point. endings are scary.” “yeah,” she scoffed, lost in her own mental blueprints. “scary how?” “it’s just…you don’t know what comes next.” 220824 what's it to you? who go blather from