Saturday, March 11, 2006

Life and Death

While on vacation in New York, I saw old friends, made new friends, had my mind expanded by art and music, ate good food, drank champagne, danced the night away, ran for miles on the Esplanade, took myself out shopping, savored my budding subway-savvy, the teaming miracle of humanity, and walked walked walked. It was a great time, enchanted and wonderful, and I felt high throughout.

I didn't want to leave, didn't want my peak experience to end. But in five days, I'd done just about everything I'd hoped to do, plus more. It was time to get on with the parts of my life which seem so tragically mundane: laundry, bills, work, correspondence, divorce. I actually cried as I drove out of town.

"Everything ends" J~ said to me back when we were bracing ourselves for pain and disappointment in our budding relationship. (See From Noank.) As I wiped away tears on the FDR Drive , he held my virtual hand while I drove, and I repeated his own wise words back to him into the phone. This is the aching beauty of life, I continued, that it is constantly changing, for better or worse. Either way, it's going to end. And the more we enjoy it, the more it hurts.

And if my sudden and excrutiating divorce is any indication, it is also true that the more we feel how much it hurts, the more open we become to the joy.

I plan to go laughing and crying all the way to my grave.

Won't you join me?

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