How Do You Deal with Endings?
In an hour, a car service is coming to get me. It will bring to me to La Guardia, where I will wait two hours for my flight to arrive. On that flight, I will hopefully not be seated next to people who smell or who make smacking noises with their mouths, nor people who are feeling talkative. I will probably read and work on some stuff for school. Mostly what I will do, probably, is I will listen to Ryan Adams–it has to be music completely disconnected from any event–and stare forward, and wonder how it is possible that I have left the place where I, only so many hours prior, was.
For better or for worse–when it comes to the everyday, doubtless for worse–endings mean the most to me. Reading, writing, “relationships,” split-second goodbyes, drawn out goodbyes that never satisfy, leaving New York City after what amounts to a month here. While reading, I’ll cover up the last few sentences of a book–any book–with my hand until my eyes get there. I almost hold my breath. An ending is an opening, a deep and unmendable rending. While writing, I’ll ensure that the ending unravels, de-sutures, overturns what precedes it. I can control my endings on the page. I want them to spill the weight of the work into a neuter space or something.
Off the page, I am a masterful botcher of endings.