Anything created ends
Wednesday, August 11th, 2021There is nothing more constant than change. You’d think a worn out cliché like this one would lose its currency, but change – especially other people’s change – makes me incredibly nostalgic for the way things were.
Adella the Storyteller transitioned.
Tommy will sell his Bay Saint Louis house.
Tin’s buddy will move to Virginia.
Leo will not be cutting the grass at the Hall anymore.
Why is this news uncomfortable?
Cancelling, postponing, moving, saying goodbye fill me with nostalgia. Melancholy sneaks in despite my daily reminders that change is my only constant.
The headline of today’s newspaper reads PACE OF DEATHS RISING as New Orleans becomes ground zero again for the fourth wave of the pandemic.
I’m in New Orleans with Tin back in school here.
Why is my son still at a school that is failing him? Why is the school open, given that children are the ones getting hit hardest this fourth wave?
Why is being here in New Orleans, walking by the Lala, meditating by the fountain in City Park, seeing the large houses that have gone up overnight on sleepy Bayou St. John – houses that remind me of a greeting card that folds open to cartoonish cutouts of buildings too big, too jammed up for the surface they are on – registering differently.
I must be in a good place now.
The whys seem unimportant.
I feel no tug of yesterday and tomorrow is safely in the future. Good, right? Yet suddenly, without warning, I’m nostalgic for the way the gloaming glimmers on Bayou St. John and this hint of fall, which the slanted sunlight on the water hints at even in this insufferable heat.
Nostalgia laden with memories.
Memories of soft pajamas and shuffling feet through a house with adults, something warm to eat, cold to drink – a bed, a window, a porch – television murmuring. Is this my childhood or Tin’s?
Today’s meditation – anything created ends
– joy, laughter, sadness, life … .
Tin’s photo
by Marc Pagani