Letting go

The remnants of my life lie around not quite ready to leave. The lone paper on the bulletin board, the soap and towel and half-eaten bag of chips, an empty plastic bag and keys that soon will be gone from my possession. No matter how many images or words or objects you take from a place you can never recreate that space entirely - the connections and memories so tied up with the physical and real. How can you put those things in a suitcase? I have dreamed the past few weeks about the program, the places, the people that have surrounded my life for the past several months but they have been small dreams, moments in sleep that are not dramatic enough for real memory the next day. Last night's only enduring memory is of writing on this very page, although the words I cannot remember, but it drove me out of bed this morning to put something down on paper - on screen. I suppose this is perhaps the most enduring connection I will retain to this Philadelphia life for Flicked into the Void started in response to a need for expression, my loneliness, the perpetual wish that I could evoke feeling and image in words. It is utterly rooted in my experience here and would never have come about without it. The beauty of this page is that the html, the visual experience remains the same no matter where I am. This I can see anywhere in the world and be put right back into this chair at this moment. Like I never left.

[Note: I was in Washington D.C. for the weekend, and thus computer-limited.]