unmooring

when we were little, my grandfather would wake us up in the morning by pretending that the bed was a boat and that he was the captain, and that we were headed out from a dock that was the bedroom or whatever fold-out sofa bed we might have spent the night. "goodbye!," he'd yell to no one who was there, "goodbye, now!" we'd wake up, one by one, listening to the sound of the engine that he made low in his throat. pretty soon my sisters and my cousins and I would be yelling our farewells, too: "goodbye, mom!" "goodbye, uncle jack!" "goodbye, aunt ro-ro!" i would picture everyone gathered on the dock, the water dappling in the sunlight, the sides of the boat as we moved out to sea, unmoored, having departed for an imaginary world that, after several minutes, gave me great pause -- where, exactly, were we going?

it occurs to me that this is a memory of an act of imagination about departure that was performed upon awakening and, in a way, a reversal. you might, for example, expect your grandfather to take you on an imaginary journey for parts unknown as a way to bridge the space between waking and dreaming. for us, it was the opposite. and, from what i can remember, we never arrived anywhere, we just left and we had no real destination in site. at first, it was really easy to get wrapped up in the fervor of yelling and waving, trying to one up each other by remembering who we still hadn't said goodbye to -- distant cousins, neighbors, schoolteachers. but, eventually, you'd get to puzzling over what you were supposed to imagine was happening once we got out of sight, once we were at sea and there was, ironically, nothing to see, and then it was simply over. now that we were fully awake -- well? well, now what?

i'm thinking about departures and endings because, of course, the summer's coming, which means i'll be saying goodbye to the all-too familiar routine of exhaustion and, by hook or by crook, i'll enter a new way of inhabiting the world, just for a little while -- on my own terms, more or less, while i intellectually and emotionally recuperate from the drain of way too many students who exert an unbelievable amount of resistance. the goal is to read deeply, develop more Big Ideas, and write about them. keep on with the yoga. go for walks. listen to abstract music. communicate with smart people. maybe return to this blog, which feels distant from me, now, especially since i suspect that, yes, students are reading it and i am not sure if that matters at all or maybe just a little bit.

i'm also thinking about departures and endings because, of course, the above memory demonstrates the bizarre temporality of such moments -- the imaginary boat ride begins as an ending, as a departure, but it never formally ends in its own right. it just kind of fizzles out in a vague non-memory of non-completion. you might say it fails to end. it is a strong memory, this awakening to the beginning of an ending, but it leaves me feeling a bit adrift in the waters of my own in-between moment.