Campfire, Woody Head. 

New Home 4. 11/12/2017.

What Is A Goodbye?

What is a goodbye?

There’s a tug-a-ware between hello and goodbye.

Is it a hello to all else and others? Is it not so sad?  Is it maybe one hundred hello’s?

Hello’s are brief, an introduction, a handshake, a kiss on the cheek, a lifetime of hello’s to follow.  An ignorance, an unknowing to what may come. To the goodbye’s that may come.  But, usually, the times between hello and goodbye are worth that last touch or glance. Almost always.

Hello’s - easy… not aware of the life that bubbles from the initial meeting. A persona created, almost, from two humans combined. I imagine it as a shadow, or cloud, that hovers, invisible, between or above two people. Like a child formed from two souls, the abstract child created by connection – human connection, whether love or friendship. That is stronger and more perceivable when the relationship is built, mostly built with age. And when lost, when goodbye comes, it dies. It’s a death of that shadow, that bubble pops. A two combined. Not just a ceasing of two people, but a ceasing of what those two people created, when one, or who they were together. It’s so much more than a parting. 

But I remember how sad I felt when I said goodbye to you. Like I couldn’t breathe. And I remember saying hello to someone else, and another, and realizing those hello’s would not exist without my breathless goodbye to you, where I truly wondered where life would sit without you.

As I write this I realise how much stronger those feelings of goodbye stay with me.

Goodbye’s, though, however hard, are openings to one hundred more hello’s. One goodbye, one hundred hello’s, what’s worth more?

There’s a tug-a-ware between hello and goodbye.

What is a goodbye?

The Unstable Foundation

A pursuit of love. A packed up bag with the only things we can take from place to place. A pilgrimage of self to us, of self to heart - to where your heart is going, or is. And that heart of yours not being yours, or in your own chest. But theirs. So packing up that life you’ve known to pursue love. To pursue a new life built solely on love. It’s such a drive, love. The idea that you will abandon all sense and all structure for it. Abandon family, work and lifestyle. Why, madness should really replace the word we call love. And you know it may not be a great foundation to move your world for, and you, in your logistic, realistic mind will know it may, and probably won’t work. That the foundation of love is already a rocky one, an unstable fort. But you also, in your irrational, infatuated, almost drunk stated mind, know it’s what you have to do. Because what if you didn’t pursue that heart? What if you didn’t drive across states to seek it out and try? Or fly across seas to attempt. To attempt the building of this requited love. And assuming you didn’t. You would perpetually wonder ‘what if?’. What if that dodgy base of a house (of love), turned out, in the end, to be a brilliant mansion, painted red, the colour of passion, and laced with roses, the flower of desire. And what if there was three rooms in that house for your children, children made from this connecting heart you did decide to pursue, made from half the person you are and half the person you love. Well, the point being, we must attempt, even in our literal, reasoning mind, at love. And if we fail, we will still keep attempting. Attempting to build that home. Whatever it takes, I think, we know one thing - love wins - even when it doesn’t work.

Clarence River, Iluka. Mum, daughter and pup. 11/May/2016.

Morning shadows. 11/May/2016.