It’s said that beginnings are so much easier then endings, but I’m not so sure. I’m much better with endings. Endings are easy. There is a simple beauty to something coming to an end. Painful but enchanting, like sand paintings blowing away in the wind.
With people, there are other things that are the wind, so I wonder if the beauty lies in the lack of control, or the idea of control. Where is the wind when we reach the end?
I moved a lot as a child. Life was a steady stream of endings. I leaned into each move, my skinny body slicing through the changes. The faces changed around me and it was like a dream. Life was like a dream. I leaned into the days, my feet barely touching the ground, my eyes closed as I felt the changes rush past my cheeks. I spread my arms and people brushed by the tips of my fingers.
Some were barely a touch and others tried to grab hold, but they all slip by, one by one, as I lean into the changes. Some feel like a dull ache on my fingers, a phantom memory, long after they are gone, while others vanish without another thought. Faces and voices. Dark, black voids of space. A laugh or a smile. A tilted head or the nape of a neck disappearing into a mass of curls. One child disappearing into a world far too big, another arriving without a breath. I feel them all, slipping by.
Maybe death is nothing more then having leaned so far that the only thing left is to become a memory yourself. To sweep past another’s outstretched fingers. To become that dull ache in someone else’s mind. To finally stop moving, and leaning, and trying so hard to control the wind.
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I know a blog is not a person, but I will miss berlin blog when it has slipped past. I often feel like each breath of my own contains the words and ideas of someone else who has gone before me. That we somehow create the air around us by surrounding ourselves with those we are most comfortable with.
I was comfortable reading the words of Catherine. I will miss her.