Long Goodbye

This is like tearing off a band aid VERY slowly. In this month I've performed in a play, performed a marriage, had my mother, sister, and 2 cousins stay with me in my 1 bedroom apartment, and finally, over a couple of fine Sonoman wines my sister and I tore down photos, paintings, buddha heads, and books, stripped my apartment and she left to Portland. I am alone here with my records, but nearly every trace of me has been taken from this apartment. Now living in this halfway apartment, this purgatory that is no longer mine, I can leave it a little easier, knowing it was a physical manifestation of the me that moved in here 4 years ago and the me now that is ready to come undone to be the other. I feel like I am saying goodbye everyday here..to streets to cars to jasmine to san francisco to bays and my queen bed. Part of me wishes I left already and didn't linger like a phantom.

The First and Last

I'm leaving Oakland Hebrew Day School today. After 4 years. Teaching, scolding, fretting..I am out. This place held me as a womanly girl. They helped pay my way to a Masters, let me do research here, gave me Fridays off. I slept off hangovers in the Rabbi's study, went to theater camp with their grants, fell out of love here and fell back into my calling. ..writing, performing, playnig, adventuring. So today is the first day of my adventure to Barcelona into the first secure unknown I've known. Secure because I've proven to myself that I can make my way anywhere, alone, that I can hang with the hardness and voice what I want. And I want besas y suenas ...kisses and dreams ... lovers and realized visions...it's time...Now to go cry goodbyes.