Change

I have been sadly neglecting this blog, but I don't really feel bad about it, because my life has required a lot of tending to, and I have been staying away from computers. Now that I'm back, what am I to write?

It's summer again. I'm in California again. I'm in the bed I've slept in since I was four years old again. I'm living under my parents' rules again. But after this summer, never again.

It's June again. D. is climbing Mt. Shasta again. I went to the beach with friends from high school again. Again, we are all home. But after this summer, this will not be home again.

The addresses I know are expiring. My room will soon be in boxes. The illusion of being back in high school, of traveling back in time when I travel west in space, is about to dissipate for the last time. Everything is falling apart.

And all the pieces are being put together in new shapes. It's not like a mosaic, because the pieces are not fragments. We haven't been shattered or shredded. It's just a rearrangement. The elements are intact, really. Chemical reactions alter substances beyond recognition, but deep inside, the atoms remain unchanged, though the molecules have been destroyed. Change: life transitions are not nuclear fission or fusion. They are just rearrangements of the atoms. Bonds break, bonds form. Sometimes the product is purer than the reactants; sometimes the new bonds are stronger than the old; other times, the reverse is true.

I don't know what is being produced in this complex series of reactions. There are flashes of light, sparks sometimes. I feel the heat. I see colors changing. I am sitting here, watching, and I am counting the crystals as they form. One. Two. Three.