Just Remember… There is always a merry-go-round going round somewhere
It is 5am. I’ve been reading since 4. Went to bed six hours ago happy after dinner by myself in the Scandic Simonkentta restaurant. Beef brisket, pureed potatoes seasoned with root parsley and braised rutabagas, turnips and parsnips on the side. A glass of wine. Very nice. Wanted to be alone, not with my former dance compatriots and friends at the performance. Why is that?
This process of deliberately ending a career, leaving a field much loved—leaving it—as opposed to easing out but keeping references friendships connections feels harsh to me this morning. So many people here at ICE HOT I admire and respect and with whom I have formed friendships over the years. Why this distancing?
Apparently I need to end things and never look back…never do them again. Wife. Bureaucrat. Political Activist/Volunteer. Social Worker. Now—Dance Programmer. But I’ve loved each of these pursuits at a point in time so isn’t there a way the friendships and interests can survive in some form? Mingling and enriching contemporary life? A rhetorical question. To which the answer is…apparently not.
Don’t look back. Avoid the awkwardness, even pain, of separation from people, places and things. You can try to keep everything that ever was connected to your life connected to your life. Or not.
Although I always return to Minnesota and check in with the old house as it dissolves into the black wet frozen warm soil pine needles blue flags pet skeletons.
Perhaps this discussion can continue with family, with Robert and Marsha, with beans and rice and Dominican beer at shabby but friendly little beach hotels over the holidays. We all explore each life passage like we are the first people ever to experience it. Silly us. But the subject is good for rambling conversations before going to bed with that new murder mystery. What’s more disquieting as you drop off to sleep? Your life passing slowly and quickly before your very eyes or the dead body in the swamp?
This is now. 5:45am, Saturday, December 14, 2012. Helsinki, Finland. One more day of ICE HOT. One more year of a dance life.