I'm flying out to Perth this evening, tomorrow morning hopping on a boat that's going to take me halfway toward an island. I'm going to hop out, go for a scuba dive. Then get back on the boat and it'll carry me all the way to the island of Rottnest where I'll meet up with Nick and Mark. I'm bummed I'm leaving Melbourne, almost stayed an extra day. Even though I was only here a few days there are some people I met I wish I'd had more time with. And Mary I'll miss most of all.
(I think the saddest line I've ever read is from a Cormac McCarthy book, in fact I think he might've used it more than once. And it's also a line in this Hold Steady song I've been listening to over and over. And it's not exact but it's basically a paragraph to itself that goes something like:
He never saw him again.
or in the song it goes and I never saw that girl again...)
The odd aspect of traveling far away alone for me is that it helps me get over my shyness because always lingering in the back of my mind is a sense of limited time, so then I get a little braver; but then I end up missing the people I meet. I've always been haunted by this little memory of a film I saw as a kid in the Smithsonian or something - where an astronaut says goodbye to their family and friends and then travels at the speed of light, and then returns home, only to find that all the loved ones are elderly or dead and yet only a few days have passed by for them. It left me with a sensation about distance and time I've never shook. There are a lot of ways to get displaced. I think it's absolutely possible to miss someone you met for only a day. Then there's pondering those relative constructs - the Album Leaf video came out of an idea I'd had years before when Mary and I broke up. I'd often wonder what she'd be doing, so many time zones away from me. I'd be coming in from a night out just as she'd be getting up. Lives run in parallel then go out of sync. I'll miss her most of all, obviously, but am very happy and proud for her.
I share this story because this is how she impresses me and it inspires me: when we decided I'd move to the US and she'd go to Dublin, it came after a period of time where she was uncertain about what she wanted to do with her life and a run of soul sucking retail or office jobs. One day she told me she wanted to work on newspapers. Mary had a habit of keeping Sunday papers for weeks on end, reading every single part of them as I'd get peeved by clutter and want to throw them away. I'd find her reading the Book Review on Wednesday, alleging (wrongly) it was old news. Mary had never done any college journalism or high school journalism of any kind - I told her to go for it but honestly the jerk part of my brain was worried. A few months later she had a job at one of the major national papers in editorial. For those of you who know Mary, you know this is someone who isn't pushy or loud or brags or who charms their way socially into things. She just did it with her smarts and dedication. Mary makes me feel like anything's possible, in an honorable way.
(I think the saddest line I've ever read is from a Cormac McCarthy book, in fact I think he might've used it more than once. And it's also a line in this Hold Steady song I've been listening to over and over. And it's not exact but it's basically a paragraph to itself that goes something like:
He never saw him again.
or in the song it goes and I never saw that girl again...)
The odd aspect of traveling far away alone for me is that it helps me get over my shyness because always lingering in the back of my mind is a sense of limited time, so then I get a little braver; but then I end up missing the people I meet. I've always been haunted by this little memory of a film I saw as a kid in the Smithsonian or something - where an astronaut says goodbye to their family and friends and then travels at the speed of light, and then returns home, only to find that all the loved ones are elderly or dead and yet only a few days have passed by for them. It left me with a sensation about distance and time I've never shook. There are a lot of ways to get displaced. I think it's absolutely possible to miss someone you met for only a day. Then there's pondering those relative constructs - the Album Leaf video came out of an idea I'd had years before when Mary and I broke up. I'd often wonder what she'd be doing, so many time zones away from me. I'd be coming in from a night out just as she'd be getting up. Lives run in parallel then go out of sync. I'll miss her most of all, obviously, but am very happy and proud for her.
I share this story because this is how she impresses me and it inspires me: when we decided I'd move to the US and she'd go to Dublin, it came after a period of time where she was uncertain about what she wanted to do with her life and a run of soul sucking retail or office jobs. One day she told me she wanted to work on newspapers. Mary had a habit of keeping Sunday papers for weeks on end, reading every single part of them as I'd get peeved by clutter and want to throw them away. I'd find her reading the Book Review on Wednesday, alleging (wrongly) it was old news. Mary had never done any college journalism or high school journalism of any kind - I told her to go for it but honestly the jerk part of my brain was worried. A few months later she had a job at one of the major national papers in editorial. For those of you who know Mary, you know this is someone who isn't pushy or loud or brags or who charms their way socially into things. She just did it with her smarts and dedication. Mary makes me feel like anything's possible, in an honorable way.
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