Stacy leaves tomorrow for Texas (the 22nd, for the log, is also my Dad's 83rd birthday, so feliz coomp to him). The house is boxes and sideways furniture and pacing cats, and Maddy's playing Jewel Pandora (which keeps delivering by the way--I'm talking the tear-jerking works). Stace and I have cohabitated (with a couple hiatuses) for the last decade, and while I feel deeply that this move and the new job (Natural History, Natural Sciences, and Environmental Studies Editor at Texas A&M in College Station) precipitating it are Right and also awesome, I'm very sad. It's crazy all the close friends who've moved away: Ilona, Teri, Maysam, Emma, Meredith, Aylin, Mel. I know twenties transience is typical, and it's the nature of the Bay that people pass through, but the adieus are adding up. My whole loosey-goosey squirrely denial-ridden M.O. is to focus in on the fluidity of things, the possibility of returns, the ease with which we can in this age communicate and visit (I'm appallingly bad about both), but these migrations are eras ending, time passing, life happening, paths diverging. And Eisen's embarkation is Major.
Earlier this morning I ran with Em--she's been in and out of Oakland over her winter break, and the runs we've squeezed in are a soul salve I've missed. When we were done I de-fanny-packed my phone and saw a text from Maddy that a surfer friend of Rama's is presumed to have drowned yesterday evening. The friend--Dan Dafoe--had been at Cronkite, and was spotted floating unconscious. He disappeared into the waves before people could get to him, and is still missing. He and Rama had been surf buds for the last twenty years, and when I got home I got to be with R for a few minutes before he went to meet Tim for a respects-paying paddle-out. I feel so grief-y about it, though I'd only met the guy once or twice and don't vividly remember him. I asked Rama if it made him feel weird about surfing, and he said no, but it was a reminder of the fragility of life. I guess he's always cognizant of the risks, but it spooks me a bit. I can't help but think of Dan's wife left behind, and "the rules that bind us here: the divers and the sailors, and the women on the pier." It's hard letting fortune take another hostage--family's of course a gimme, but eros is comparatively voluntary. One of the first pre-Divers Joanna interviews I read had a bit that's been a brain barb (and provided major insight into the album):
“Everyone’s getting older. When I crossed that line in my mind where I knew I was with the person that I wanted to marry, it was a very heavy thing, because you’re inviting death into your life. You know that that’s hopefully after many, many, many, many years, but the idea of death stops being abstract, because there is someone you can’t bear to lose. When it registers as true, it’s like a little shade of grief that comes in when love is its most real version. Then it contains death inside of it, and then that death contains love inside of it."
I can't write any more about this because it feels like a fate-taunt. I've listened to that album a lot the last few months and have in some section of my mind an ongoing mulling on life and death and time from my own shifting position, and maybe I'll have some more to say another day. But this entry is about Eisen and how much I love her and how much I'm going to miss having her around on the daily, and I want to send out official thanks for the chunk of good fucking time we've had. Furthermore here's to a lifetime of bestie-hood, and to her eventual triumphant return as director of UCP post-Texas massacring. In the meanwhile as time plays on in all its tuneful turning, we'll keep praying for more of these days that are the good flesh continuing.