Things change, move on, move out, and new cogs constantly and endlessly replace the old in the giant soul-crushing siege-engine that is Hollyweird. Parts and people wear out, ground to dust and nibs chasing fortune, fame, and other vile and pathetic states of being advertised nightly on prime time.
And I've had the curious fortune to have been there to see the end of it, the downward spiral, the last bits where, as Harvey Dent observed in The Dark Knight, "you either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain." Sans the heroic sacrifice bit, that is.
And I've seen the endings of many, many things-- loves, lives, friendships, dreams, hopes, illusions and delusions. I may not have been around for the beginning, or even to have witnessed the peaks and highs and triumphs and salad days of yore and legend, but I've definitely been around to see the days of decay and disillusionment and deaths of empires and fiefdoms carved out into the social landscape of this urban sprawl.
So you'd probably understand it if for quite a long stretch of time, I'd consigned myself to the role of eternal witness to the end of cycles, a part that I'd not been too pleased with for quite a long while. I mean, yeah, there's that crap one-hit-wonder song about every new beginning coming from some other beginning's end, but the focus for me had always been about the ending, never the eventual flora and fauna that would emerge from the fertilizing decay of a much-abused and obscenely violated figurative corpse.
I don't know if I'd really consider the actual ending of things to be intrinsically good or bad, since for some, it was merely a mercy killing and a blessing, but the fixation on the declining bit of the curve was very much starting to get old.
Which brings me to an interesting bit-- after a rather interesting conversation from someone I barely know, a sometimes-co-worker to whom I'd be generous in saying that I've talked with for what amounts to slightly more than a cumulative hour's time in the months that we've been aware of each other's existence. We'd had a brief exchange on the subject of world travel, specifically the Down Under bits of the world, and I'd asked about her blog, since she'd mentioned blogging about those bits. After the blog exchange, we'd gone about our way, I filed the address away somewhere, and that was that for that, as far as things went.
I may have talked to her once since then in the subsequent months.
Anyhow, a few weeks later, having been the equivalent of the utter shitknuckle fucknut FlakeyMcFlakerards who say "yeh, sure, I'll check out your blog" but never do, I ran into said acquaintance yet again and was met with not a description of a blog filled with riveting accounts of her encounters with exotic marsupials and other denizens of the Island Continent, but rather her decision to pack up and pull out.
No surprise there, happens all the time. Tinseltown takes its toll on people, and though taking frequent journeys out of the basin for points elsewhere might be a healthy preventative measure for retaining some semblance of functional sanity, the wear and tear does add up. Plus seeing how real people live in other parts of the globe will probably give you a slight distaste for what passes for a wonderfully airbrushed cardboard existence in this corner of the world.
Point being, she was leaving, marking the end of yet another cycle, beginning with a dream somewhere else and finishing sometime this summer with the planned departure. This person I barely knew was getting the fuck out of Dodge, with mixed feelings but a sense of peace and acceptance in her decision, and for the first time in a long time in my rather jaded and cynical run in this town, I didn't really know how to feel about that.
Don't get me wrong, I usually don't feel anything-- been there, seen it, had many a good friend abandon this sinking ship of a city, finding that which they'd been searching for here in the place they'd actually left to begin with or something else equally as ironic or comical, leaving me the last holdout of times and ambitious enterprises too numerous to count. Then again, I'd actually come here NOT because of anything in particular, but because it was anywhere BUT where I'd started, so I wasn't pre-packaged with the sorts of aspirations others have when moving here. In any case, most departures I've been presented with in more recent memory have been met with either indifference or some sense of "good riddance."
It may have been the way she framed her particular decision which gave me pause for thought.
No, this isn't going where you think it's going. I've not decided to pull up roots and head out myself-- not yet, anyway, and not without a proper exit strategy. But it's this:
If I've learned nothing else (and I really haven't learned all that much) from the years of playing witness to the end and death of things, it's this: All cycles end, including the cycle of being at the end of cycles. This somewhat friendly acquaintance pointed out that sometimes you realize that what you want (or don't want) wasn't what you wanted (or didn't want) at all, and that some things are just past their expiration date, including, in my case, seeing things to (and sometimes past) their expiration date.
So it's quite fitting that the end of yet another thing in a long litany of ended things be the birth cry of the Grand Design, the distillation and reincarnation of the best parts of times and cycles past, brought forth free of the end-times baggage that's mired previous incarnations.
Fresh and new and ready to rock with the fist of an angry god.
Stay tuned to more bits and pieces and segments and parts.
And to the girl I barely know who's determined to make her happiness elsewhere, thanks for the cumulative hour's worth of interesting conversation and good luck and much good fortune in your travels.
Also, ave atque vale.
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