One of my friends has moved away. Or at least I think he did. I knew it would happen at some point, but I don’t think I knew how quickly he’d be moving. He’s gone back to Australia and isn’t sure for how long. It’ll be at least a few months. He has to get his Visa straightened out. I think there’s a good chance he won’t come back at all, or if he does, it won’t be to San Francisco, and if it is, it will probably be to a different neighborhood or different Bay Area town. It feels like there’s a finality to his departure. I keep thinking we may not see each other again. Though who knows. I didn’t ask him if he kept his place here, I just wished him well and said we’ll miss him. We’ve only known each other for a few months, but we probably hung out once or twice a week. We had lots of wide-ranging conversations over beers, lots of laughs, too. We were talking about taking up tennis together. Of the friends I’ve made out here, he’s the one that most reminds me, in spirit, of my friends back in State College: good guys, funny, sincere, and able to talk about a lot of things.
As with any departure, I’m feeling a range of emotions. I’m bummed about the sense of finality. It has a “Road Not Taken” quality to it: “Yet knowing how way leads on to way, / I doubted if I should ever come back.” It has me thinking about the roles different people play in our lives and how to feel gratitude for these all-to-brief encounters. Perhaps more than anything, it has me thinking about change and attachment. My friend seemed pretty stoic about leaving – as though it’s just another move. Even if it’s just for a few months, he seemed pretty unfazed. Perhaps he’s just more used to it than I am. He’s already lived in New York, and I think London and few other cities.
With his departure, I’ve been trying to imagine moving again. I don’t know if San Francisco is my forever place. I know I like it. I know I’m not ready to leave it. But there’s something that nags at me and tells me that I’m missing out on all the other amazing places in the world. In some respects, I admire my friend’s stoicism which, in turn, makes me feel limited in my approach to geography and sense of home – as though I’m too attached to my way of living to pick up and move again or to consider finding meaning and beauty in other places.
I think that’s the part that has made me uncomfortable and pensive – the broader impermanence and limits of love (romantic, platonic, geographic, etc.). Years ago, a woman I was dating and I were having a conversation in which we both said that if things didn’t work out, we couldn’t imagine falling in love again (or getting married, or trying again, or something to that effect). It wasn’t meant as a promise or even a prophecy, yet with each passing year, the statement (at least for me) seems to gain validity. I haven’t fallen in love like that since, and I sometimes wonder if, in several aspects of life, my “best days” and experiences are behind me. If I hesitate to get another pet, it’s because I can’t imagine other pets being as great as the ones I’ve had. I’m not sure I’ve enjoyed a job as much as I did the one I had ten years ago. If I’m not sure I’d want to move out of SF, it’s because I’m living in one of the best places I’ve ever lived. That kind of love, that kind of attachment almost guarantees two forms of future grief: one form will come when the loss occurs (and loss always occurs) and the other is in what is given up in order to hold on. In the case of geography (my present love), it’s other lives, other cities, and other possibilities. Further complicating matters is that quite often, we may love something without realizing the depths of it until it’s gone. This morning, I was remembering the frost on the grass back in Pennsylvania. As much as I was sick and tired of the long, cold winters, I miss seeing that first frost in the morning light… I miss seeing my cloud of breath in the cold air.
Should my friend not move back, I’ll miss hanging out with him – much like I miss hanging out with other friends. Or, should he move back years from now, I wonder if I’ll still be here? If not too heavy, departures can be times for reflection. They can be times to consider life’s bounty, life’s other opportunities. They can remind us of, and challenge us on, our limitations – both perceived and real. They can remind us of the joy found in reunions. And they can be times to remember earnest or meaningful or funny exchanges. In the case of this friend, he told me one of the funnier stories I’ve ever heard.
It was about one of his mates (Australian) who was living in London and had met a socialite/aristocratic at a party and gone back to her mansion afterwards. In the middle of the night he had to use the bathroom and fumbled his way naked (except for his socks) in the dark down the hall to the water closet. He took a dump that wouldn’t flush. Slightly panicked, and maybe still drunk, he took off one of his socks and fished out the turd the way one might pick up dog crap with a bag-covered hand. He opened the bathroom window, swung the sock around a few times and let it fly out the window. He washed up and wearing only one sock headed back to the bedroom triumphantly thinking, “well that took care of that.” In the morning, he woke before the woman he was sleeping with woke, and went, once again, to the bathroom to relieve himself. Upon opening the door, to his horror, he saw a ring of shit on the walls from having swung the sock around. Naturally, he did what any upstanding gent would do and snuck out of the house. As my friend told the story, we cried laughing at the details and how he imitated his friend swinging a sock and afterwards dusting off his hands for a job well done.