Zelda's Inferno exercise: write about leaving
The first concert my parents took me to, at Merriweather Post Pavilion, was John Denver. The second, or maybe the third, was Peter, Paul and Mary. So the song "Leaving on a Jet Plane" found its way into my consciousness early. I find myself humming it whenever I'm about to take a plane trip. "I'm leaving on jet plane, I don't know when I'll be back again." Except that I do know, I've always got a round trip ticket, I'm just going for a few days, a week or two -- the longest so far was three months.
But then, we never really do know when we'll be back. The plane could crash. Or I could decide to shave my head and become Buddhist monk on Koya-san, or a beach bum in San Diego, or a banker on Wall Street, or a punk rock guitarist in Greenwich Village. I could leave this life behind at any moment, without even the help of a jet plane, and arrive somewhere new.
Indeed I must leave, always leaving this moment to arrive at the next one, the momentum of time like an avalanche, skidding downhill in a jumble, we try to grab on but there's no purchase, no ledge, no hiding place, no rest for the wicked, calling "Hello, I must be going" as we slide down time's hill.