just a song

Ukelele: The camp ended. There wasn't many tears, except when Joanna left. There were, of course, hugs and notes: hugs that spoke louder than words had been able to do in three weeks, as well as uncomfortable hugs, hugs by expectation, hugs of severance. Notes containing compliments and platitudes, silent notes speaking carefully, notes with outpourings of almost desperate love. A note declaring the recipient as grossly self-centered, honest. His back was a voice bubble saying "Rock On" which is about as much a sidestep as you can get and still have pen on paper. It appears the people of France and I might need to spend a bit of time on patching our relationship.

Voice: I do feel bad that I didn't really try very hard. I tried but I couldn't find it. This will be my last international CISV program for a while - I think I get it now, I think it's time for me to do something else. Mosaic, for one thing, and other things, other things entirely. Which is certainly not to say I have regrets: No. Wheat fields, capoed guitar on hilltop, Amella (as a symbol), Magdalena, Jo, the looking beyond, the smell of rain and fire; no.

Accordion: She is only seven, and she is waiting and she will keep on waiting and she has been waiting all of her life, and she is unknowing, she is defined by unknowing. Here I am in Sweden, so easily in Sweden. That's something.

Percussion: The Dane, Kierkegaard, asks if despair is a merit or a defect. He proposes that it is both. "It is infinite merit to be able to despair. And yet not only is it the greatest misfortune and misery actually to be in despair; no it is ruin...Despair is the imbalance in a relation of synthesis, in a relation which relates to itself. But the synthesis is not the imbalance, the synthesis is ust the possibility; or, the possibility of the imbalance lies in the synthesis. If the synthesis were itself the imbalance, there would be no despair; it would be something that lay in human nature itself, that is, it would not be despair; it would be something that happened to a person, something he suffered, like a sickness he succumbs to, or like death, which is the fate of everyone. No, despair lies in the person himself. But if he were not a synthesis there would be no question of his despairing; nor could he despair unless the synthesis were originally in the right relationship from the hand of God."

Trumpets: You are so beautiful when you are shy.