3/16/2011

ends & beginnings

The end of something will always mean the beginning of something. Sometimes we forget this.

I am most definitely at the end of something, though this "end" has been happening for quite a while.

Even before moving (and planning to move to Germany) I have felt that pull of needing to conclude a chapter in my life, to move on to something new, though I knew not what "new" meant. I still don't, at least not entirely. I have ideas, I have leanings, but let's just see where the path leads, even if cut my own path.

That big "end of something" was huge. I gave away my stuff. I packed away my life. Became literally homeless. Quit my job, which was so much of who I was for years. Cancelled accounts/services. Truck-sold. Motorcycle-sold. Honestly, the hardest for me was losing my bike. It became an extension of me, of how I learned to define myself. I had this not-so-secret hope that maybe it won't sell by the time I visit Texas in June so that I could hop back on and ride. Just ride. But alas, ends are not discriminatory. (Did you notice my chosen diction of "visit"? I'm not returning home for a week. It's no longer home.) The "end" was huge. And strangely I like it.

There's lots of types of ends however. There's the big, final, life-altering ends, then there's the short transitional ones, like my present situation. My first semester of graduate school in Germany is [quickly] coming to a close. Only three more exams (out of 11) then next week begins a month off awaiting the beginning of the summer semester. It seems both quickly passing and forever in frozen time; both the desire to move time along and an eagerness to slow its haste.

Time is truly measured. The measuring stick seems to be just beyond our comprehension, but we know it's continuous. Time marches on despite those ends. So there's beginnings. New semester, new chapter, new life definition.

No comments: