2001-03-02 - 08:23:44

After a year of talking about moving, I can�t believe its finally happening . . .Its so strange because I haven�t even started packing, shipping, cleaning etc -- So I�m panicked on the one hand about not having enough time to take care of business before I leave . . .But on the other hand I�m still living my life as usual and so the idea that in 2 weeks I�ll have a completely new life away from here seems very surreal.

Every once in a while the self-consciousness hits me that I�m doing things for the last time. That I�m going to certain places or hanging out with someone for the last time, possibly ever. I would like to be celebrating these moments, savoring them, making them magical - but I�m not. Celebrations of that nature somehow seem hollow without being able to share them with my closest friends, Larissa, Jim, Leslie -- Because in my mind Atlanta is intimately connected with them - When I think of Atlanta I think of them and vice-versa - I think of our times in College and the summer we lived together afterwards, I think of the life Larissa and I had living together last year and the summer with Jim, I think of the bars we made our own and the nights spent laughing and talking and drumming in our old apartment. But Larissa and Jim have already left Atlanta behind and I barely see Leslie . . .

Still, I made a point to go to my favorite cemetary this week for the last time - A cemetary hidden in the middle of a lower middle class neighborhood and left completely untended, with graves hidden amid a forest of trees. Every so often my friends and I would go there at night to drink just because it was too beautiful a night to be inside a bar when we could be out in the air - And because it was a secret place full of mystery and beauty where we could be ourselves undisturbed. Since Larissa left I couldn�t get anyone to go out there with me again until this week.

I went to the cemetary with a bottle of wine to hang out with my friend Corey, but also to do something I had promised myself I would do for the last six months - bury my little bonzai tree which had died last year.

I know it seems ridiculous to hang on to a little plant for 6 months, but it was a special bonzai tree and I felt it deserved a little respect. Larissa and I drove out of the city to a nearby Monastary last year and bought the little bonzai tree together for our apartment from the monks there. The tree was named Sarissa (that was the given name of the plant) and it was nicknamed �June Snow� because it had the most perfect tiny white blooming flowers on it. We brought it home and treated it like our baby - and the first time I ever did shrooms I tripped out with this tree and saw how it LIVED and BREATHED and how SMALL it was - But despite our efforts at caring for it the little plant didn�t survive.

At the cemetary I picked a spot to bury it next to some other living plants. The ground was wet from a rain earlier that day and I dug a litte hole with a spoon. I poured some wine in a circle aound the spot and lit some candles and recited a poem -- The same poem that Larissa and I once spoke when we buried a little bird in her backyard:

May my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it�s sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there�s never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile

~~e.e. cummings

I read that poem because the tree to me was like a little bird, it was a symbol of the small things in life that bring joy to our lives - the things we often overlook that are full of meaning everywhere around us - the things that make life beautiful. I wanted to bury the little tree not because it would mean anything to the tree, whose life had long left it, but out of respect for all things living however small -- and out of symbolism for remembering what�s important in life: the little moments, the little lives.

I know I�m very very lucky - and I�m grateful - to have the opportunity now to quit work for a year and spend my life in a most beautiful city with the leisure time to spend paying attention to these things instead of having to focus on everything involved in making ends meet -- so I look forward to my move . . . This is what I keep telling myself when I get bogged down in thinking of the past or of the errands and the superficiality of my last days here in Atlanta . . .

There is so much ahead for me and in only 3 weeks I will be visiting Larissa and Jim in California for two weeks on my way to Canada!!! I'm really thrilled. (Sadly I won't be visiting my Texas boy Jeff because of lack of funds, but you never know what the future may bring)