{"id":499,"date":"2008-09-09T04:47:41","date_gmt":"2008-09-09T08:47:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/?p=499"},"modified":"2009-05-11T03:47:07","modified_gmt":"2009-05-11T07:47:07","slug":"matter-full-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/?p=499","title":{"rendered":"Matter-full things"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When was I supposed to say goodbye?  Sometime before I forgot about you, of course.  And preferably sometime after you&#8217;d forgotten about me.<\/p>\n<p>But if I had to wait until the former, then I&#8217;d be right where I am, never having said goodbye, still remembering you.  And if I had to wait until the latter, why then say goodbye at all?  <\/p>\n<p>I am not inhumane.  I may be inconsiderate.  I know I am quite selfish.  I may still be a child.  <\/p>\n<p>But when, exactly, is the end?  And how am I to know?  When to cry.  When to move on.  When to run.  And when to give up.  Until the end, what do I do instead?  <\/p>\n<p>Even of the things which have answers readily available, I am too lazy to find them out.  As for finding answers to these matter-full things, well, simply contemplating such a monumental effort just knocks me breathless.  Besides, where would I begin to look?  <\/p>\n<p>Maybe I have never been in love.  But, at least several times I thought I was.  Maybe I was only in fear, never love.  And maybe I chose impossible objects for my affection, beautiful young things in a league so far from me that I could safely count on never being met in my passions by the other.  Maybe I wanted to be sure that he would never confront me on the ground of my own heart.  Or maybe it was I that feared to tread on the ground of his.  <\/p>\n<p>He&#8211;the many of them who were each &#8216;the one&#8217; from time to time&#8211;is now gone.  And never once, I think, did I say goodbye.  And just now something smacks here of dishonesty.  &#8216;Gone&#8217; is not exactly true; almost all are still somewhere.  Only one has died.  And &#8216;not here&#8217; is subjective in every case, even death.  <\/p>\n<p>And it doesn&#8217;t matter if I play games with place, chasing objects too far to reach, and running from all that would come close.  All that means is that I am terrified, and lonely, like a million others.  But it doesn&#8217;t give me an answer.  <\/p>\n<p>When was I supposed to say goodbye?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When was I supposed to say goodbye? Sometime before I forgot about you, of course. And preferably sometime after you&#8217;d forgotten about me. But if I had to wait until the former, then I&#8217;d be right where I am, never &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/?p=499\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=499"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":575,"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499\/revisions\/575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/burgwinkel.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}