in other than words

also lately (along with actually carrying out grown up responsibilities, academic & otherwise) i’ve been finally updating this, my photo page(s). it wasn’t an easy task, & not just because i’d been avoiding looking back at anything since july; i couldn’t do fall w/o having done (what little there was of) summer, and i couldn’t do summer without finishing spring, & spring ended with a whole cheerful set of pictures from lynette’s birthday party & our going-away slumber party for jason out at her & shawn’s place. i hadn’t even gotten around to the may trip to wineries–and who could talk about wineries & random tipsy traveling in light of all that happened after?

part of coming home early was for the sake of sifting & rearranging & putting things where they belonged, though, & “things” wasn’t just the growing number of piles of academic papers on the floor beside my desk–they’re all gone, too, btw, filed appropriately whether in new folders or the recycle bin. “things” also meant photographs & memories, also meant moving the scrapbook-project art supplies (we used lynette’s; she had this huge mad box and piles of construction paper) out of my bedroom since the scrapbook is long since compiled and nobody’s coming by to ask for them back. nobody’s coming back.

i was accused of moving on, when i moved the art supplies, & i cried & said i was not, although i was told it would be all right if i was. i know, in theory, there’s “nothing wrong with” whatever “moving on” means, but i’m not comfortable with the term, at least not in this circumstance. i can talk about moving on like leaving a job behind, or a shitty relationship–you’ve got other roads to walk, and you’re still you, and you keep walking. it’s like “getting over it”–i can get over “it”s. but i don’t get over people; they’re real, they touch you, they change you, and wherever you go next, you still take part of them with you. the you that’s still walking is a different you than the one that was walking before. i might still be moving, still be to some degree in motion, but i can’t–and wouldn’t–step around this loss like it’s a boulder in some otherwise un-bouldered path. i’m not finally–or likely ever to be–moving away from losing lynette this summer. i’m still moving, and i’m taking her and loss and everything it created with me as i go.

so, anyway, pictures are up, of the past 3 seasons, of lots of here & bits of boston & nova & arizona, of neighbors & friends & family of both the blood and choosing kinds, little threads of time & space that don’t seem real yet, but i snagged them to look back on just in case.