[ ed's journal jan.12.01 ]

[ j o u r n a l ]

The following online journal entries are from January 2001.

They are taken from my written journal and email updates to friends.

[ 0 1 . 1 2 . 0 1 ]

Friday. 4:24 PM. My most recent update I sent to people:

2001: A San Francisco Odyssey and Other Meditations...
As I stare out my window at the January rain coming down on San Francisco, keeping the sky a pearly gray, I wonder how and why it's taken me so long to turn on the faucet in my often over-earnest brain to sit down and ramble out a few or four-hundred lines in an email update. Since the start of the holidays late last year, life has been more than my fair share of tumultuous. Furthermore, akin to crop circles and dreams about falling, the turn of the year summons for me period of deep introspection. I have been living relatively quietly lately spending most of my time nestled in some small place inside my thoughts and spirit. But I'm sure the words will come tumbling out...
I am really uncertain as to where to begin. I'll just hop around, like Goldilocks, from point to point, from moment to moment, until I find a place that's just right. I think my last big email update was last June. Crimony, I need to get better at sending these things out. But I think through conversations here and there, most of you know what's been going on. Though even my personal journaling has been scarce of late. I just haven't been in a particularly writey-type space.
Again, the usual disclaimers apply: this is just a slice of my life, this is not all of my life, this is what I'm thinking now and not necessarily going to be thinking the same thing six months from now, this is private yet public because it's going to a list that grows longer every day, this is my way of keeping connected with all of the people in my life. It is that connection that remains key and underscored.

[ 0 1 . 1 2 . 0 1 cont. ]

		
     ELEGY FOR N.S.

     Certainty is on my mind
     as I count the short number of days
     I had to know you,
     and the long number of days
     I have to miss you
     and to look for you at my table.
     I know so few words,
     no good synonyms
     for loss, for your death,
     except it is a kind 
     of paralysis, a roughness,
     like shortness in my chest,
     that holds my tongue
     and writing hand.
     But I cannot give you
     to silence yet.
     I want to belt out
     in thunder and aria,
     ring monk's bells
     till my hands burn,
     call out your name
     over and over and tearful
     for you to walk through
     my front door
     like Gilgamesh or Orpheus
     returned.
     (I just want to say
     come back.)
     You find for me the words,
     good antonyms
     for goodbye, for your pain,
     like gentleness or brown hair,
     honor and friendship,
     brilliance, presence, warm hands,
     ease of self, ease with others,
     bike rides and boyish smiles.
     You were too young 
     to walk the long road.
     I believe in you
     and your power to be
     in many places at once,
     here, next door, there, 
     with the clutch of friends
     who now guard you,
     here, at home, there
     with the summer in your eyes
     leaving footprints near the ocean.
     (And I just want to say
     come back.)
                           --EYC '01

It's only a handful of days into the new year and already I have been delivered a black dot. Last week, on Thursday, my new friend Nick, who just joined my Tellings gaming group, was killed in a car accident. He and his girlfriend were driving back to San Francisco from Seattle. It seems that Amy, who was driving at the time, fell asleep at the wheel. Tragically, Nick did not survive though his girlfriend Amy did. My thoughts and condolences are with Nick, Amy, all of their friends and family. Nick is survived by his mother, father, and younger brother. I believe he was only twenty-one.

I will miss him.

[ i n d e x E D ]

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