The fact of my departure has been certain for some time now but only today have I begun to do anything about the physical process itself. I have collected a great deal of moss and a great deal of it needs to stay. So today, after indulging myself in a lunch at Phoenix Pastificio, I sorted through my effects: papers, receipts, books, sheet music, paints, letters, CDs, musical instruments, biking clothes, souveniers ranging from a Peruvian scarf to airline tickets and scribbled notes. I am forced to distinguish (as I have my whole life, with varying success) what is important and what is not.

Looking out the window at the sun setting over Oakland I realize that in comparison to all the things I will never see again the scraps in my possession are a meagre flotsam. I thought of a poem by Borges, and though the image of the book where it sits on my shelf immediately came to mind I had to flip through it to find where the poem lived in its pages. In doing so I remembered reading the book for the first time in Boston and the comfort it gave me, and the memory was indistinguishable from the smell of the pages. The translation was not the one I remembered. It is this one:

There is a line in Verlaine I shall not recall again,
There is a nearby street forbidden to my step,
There is a mirror that has seen me for the last time,
There is a door I have shut until the end of the world.
Among the books in my library (I have them before me)
There are some I shall never reopen.
This summer I complete my fiftieth year:
Death reduces me incessantly.

I did not understand the poem the first time; I do now. Somehow I am greater than what I have lost. I would not possess what I do now if I had not lost what I did. I will gladly lose what I now possess, to say what Thomas did in Naples.

(cdm | Limits )