by Lucy S.
My good friend Amir is moving away. I'll see him tonight when he reads his poetry and I'll see him tomorrow when we go see a movie and eat a meal together afterward. Then we'll say goodbye until who knows when, and he'll fly away early Tuesday morning.
I can write that I hate these endings of times that will never come back - the definitive, more noticeable cut-offs that make us see what we otherwise miss when our days seem to go on as if all is staying the same when in reality, everything is always in flux - something always ending, something always beginning. But I don't know if "hate" is the right word. I wish he could go and have all the new adventures that he will have and we could still somehow meet at least a couple times a month for our relaxed hangouts that have no purpose beyond the joy of talking and being there together.
I can say I don't hate endings because endings bring people into our lives who we'd never know otherwise. Moving here was an ending to the life Amir had before. Going back to finish my bachelor's degree - which placed me in the class where I met Amir - was an end to the life I'd had before, even if that ending was not as stark and obvious as geographical moves are. Still, something gets lost even as something new is gained.
I've tried to understand the truth about these endings. Marcuse wrote that "there are only islands of good where one can find refuge for a brief time" (47). And: "Actually it is not a question of the happy end; what is decisive is the work as a whole. It preserves the remembrance of things past" (48). This is the best I can figure out right now. In whatever ways are possible, I try to make the endings not be total - make them and what comes after them be part of "the work as a whole" - this laboring creation - this story - that is a relationship and a whole life and a whole humanity.
Marcuse, Herbert. The Aesthetic Dimension: Toward A Critique of Marxist Aesthetics. Boston: Beacon Press, 1978.
When I read the post, I just remembered my departure from the U.S. The scene that first came to my mind was the one at the airport. I hate good-buys, but I feel that in this life we are obliged to face these situation over and over because of the various constraints imposed on us by immigration restrictions, academia, capitalism, etc. The feelings of loneliness, solitude and rootlessness that follow are horrible at first. Then, life teaches us to go on under the motto “life does not stop.” We remember those we love and we miss them, but we learn to live without them. We learn how to skype with them and how to become content with facebook messages and emails. We are expected to adjust to these transnational lifestyles that attempt to connect their shattered parts that are divided all over the world. I feel that I leave a part of me with every continent or country I leave. I really hate that. As you said, every end is a beginning for sth new. I left my mother, brothers and two best friends back home to find Lucy in the U.S. Then, I left the American Lucy to meet other people in other places of the world, but, unfortunately, I could not find the same attachment and connection I felt with her. In order not to end on a sad note, I am, unfortunately, expected to say and to convince/delude myself into believing that the best is to come.
ReplyDeleteWhen I read the post, I just remembered my departure from the U.S. The scene that first came to my mind was the one at the airport. I hate good-byes, but I feel that in this life we are obliged to face these situation over and over because of the various constraints imposed on us by immigration restrictions, academia, capitalism, etc. The feelings of loneliness, solitude and rootlessness that follow are horrible at first. Then, life teaches us to go on under the motto “life does not stop.” We remember those we love and we miss them, but we learn to live without them. We learn how to skype with them and how to become content with facebook messages and emails. We are expected to adjust to these transnational lifestyles that attempt to connect their shattered parts that are divided all over the world. I feel that I leave a part of me with every continent or country I leave. I really hate that. As you said, every end is a beginning for sth new. I left my mother, brothers and two best friends back home to find Lucy in the U.S. Then, I left the American Lucy to meet other people in other places of the world, but, unfortunately, I could not find the same attachment and connection I felt with her. In order not to end on a sad note, I am, unfortunately, expected to say and to convince/delude myself into believing that the best is to come.
ReplyDeleteIt has happened by chance that I am reading Geraldine Pratt and Victoria Rosner's The ZGlobal and the Intimate. The first sentences of the book might further explain what I said above: “how many intimate relationships do you maintain through the internet or over the phone? Can you touch those you love on a daily basis, or are you likely to ‘hear’ their voices through a text message or telephone call and see their faces on a computer screen” (Pratt and Rosner 1).
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for all that you wrote here, my friend. I'd like to read that book. Yeah, what's hard is the expectation to always put a positive spin on everything when sometimes we need to grieve or to say that at times there's just something that gets to be too much in all these upheavals. I'm tired this semester and struggling with a backlash within myself against the continual busyness. I miss you. And I will miss Amir. I miss so many people, and it seems impossible to solve this. It seems to just get worse. I'm feeling too melancholy right now. But as you say, life does not stop. I too was thinking of the airport moments.
ReplyDeleteHi Lucy, I wanted some time to respond to your post, but the move is still fresh and raw and I haven't processed what it really means when people pack up their lives from a place they have grown to know and love (even amidst the challenges). Even the moves that seem like choices are always made in a set of circumstances that force them upon us in some ways. I feel like that with my move, too, that even though it seems that I decided when to leave, I felt that I couldn't stay in my work situation much longer and moving seemed like one concrete way to improve it. It kept building up, and when I made the decision to finally move, I just went through all the motions and now...here I am. What did I escape? What I did run to find? I am being somewhat metaphoric, I know.
ReplyDeleteMy closest friends, like you, lifted me up in Minneapolis. But a lot failed us. The way that these institutions and programs just drop us after we meet their graduation requirements, the way that people can't find worthwhile jobs, the way that people are dehumanized and degraded through it all and are expected to just accept it. The lies, the deceit, the isolation, the constant erosion that capitalism keeps churning out, and it becomes all too much to take.
Now I will be getting ready to move somewhere else (in the late summer), on the one hand yes getting to experience new things and having a somewhat secure place for now, but on the other hand having to pick up the pieces anew and start again when I had begun establishing myself with some success in the Twin Cities and felt a sense of grounding.
Perhaps that's what we feel so strongly when someone close to us moves or we move. We lose that sense of grounding, that sense that we have something -- someone -- to rely on, to converse with, to know us deeply. What flowers of life we might find there. We found there.
With memories of happiness and memories of sorrow, with the pain of passing time, with the knowledge that life could be better for us all, we go on....
Amir
Thanks for writing, Amir. Yes, what I feel is that these institutions function only as partial communities at best because most of us who are part of them for a time can't fully sink our roots into them as genuine communities. And yeah, all of this is called "choice" - as if people move far away to study because they simply "want" to for the hell of it, rather than because the missing choice is to study, grow, and work in the communities they are in for a time. I know that freelance work was getting to you... I read an article today that made me think about your situation. https://workingclassstudies.wordpress.com/category/issues/class-and-education/ As I kept saying, these pseudo-employers think they have a right to dip into your labor when they want to and only pay for it as piecework while expecting to have full time access to you (without paying for that).
ReplyDeleteI honestly don't think it's fully sunken into my psyche that you're gone from here. I think I've reached a point where I talk about things and keep them on the surface because it is just too sad. And I'm tired. And I keep distracting myself.
I know we'll find the next phase in our friendship, and I know you're going on to do awesome, important work. I guess we have to let ourselves grieve in our own ways.
Sorry... wrong link. It's this:
ReplyDeletehttps://workingclassstudies.wordpress.com/2015/02/16/taskers-the-precariat-in-the-on-demand-economy-part-one/
Hi Lucy,
ReplyDeleteThanks for responding and sharing the link. Yeah, the freelance work was getting awful. It started out semmingly okay in the beginning, but then it progressively got worse and worse. I am thankful and fortunate to be out of that sinkhole, and wish others could get out of it too if they are trapped there. It starts to wear one down more and more over time. For me, I could move on by moving away and getting into a program. There were few if any job possibilities that were concretely available. Because it's a double-bind to just quit something without having any sort of income to pay for rent/utilities/etc. But I could by staying at my parents.
Yeah, that article describes the situation of freelancing. Now that I have firsthand experience with it, I have been wanting to write something serious about it, but won't be able to at least until late spring. There a lot of things I have to deal with right now and finish, and I can't devote enough time and attention to it now.
I also hear what you're saying about keeping things at the surface to cope. I understand. And sometimes we let those things puncture us so much. Both ways are hard.
I think one important thing is to keep hope for the future. To think about some of the exciting, if different, ways that people can continue to be part of each other's lives, even if they've moved away. For me, I know that visiting is the most important, so I think of ways that that can happen.
Amir