Yesterday, I sat with J. on the dock of the house in the country. The sun was shining bright, baking us at a dry 100 degrees. We had made bison for lunch and spent an hour cooking a blackberry berry syrup while talking about science fiction.

We were wet from jumping off the end of the dock, drinking blackberry limeade, listening to music on the little waterproof speaker I’ve used for years.

“This last week I just felt better,” Jay said to me and I had to agree. I’ve been struggling with energy, time, anxiety, and yet these last weeks I have felt better. I’ve felt like I’m at the beginning of something brighter.

We looked out at the pond, the dyke my grandfather built, the woods mid sucession from intermediate to climactic, a single pool toy floating idly by. We listened to the birds chirping, the frogs croaking, a neighbor practicing with a hunting rifle all which seemed to be responding to our music.

A song from the end of a movie came on, and J. told me he could almost see the scrolling credits in front of us. I had to agree. It was so palpable that feeling of things drawing down, of challenges mastered and overcome, of all that bullshit falling away. I could perceive the way that this shot, this landscape, would be lingered on. The rest of that days relaxation used as backdrop for the viewers catharsis.

We came out there to start something but in reality we ended something. Neither of us are on our final chapter. There are still books in our series to be written but what comes next will be the challenges of squires and not pages. Our ordeals are over.

The first album I ever loved was Pressure Chief by Cake. In fact, its probably still my favorite album, or at the very least top three.

Every song on it has hit me at the right time, in some deep and moving way. They take turns. They choose different moments to strike. Though it was not the song we were listening to, yesterday brought this one to mind.

End of the Movie is short and sweet. It says what its says and leaves you to understand it later. It captures, with care and beauty, the Stubborn bravery needed to survive. It promises that yes, there is something you are sticking around for. The end of the movie, the end of the show, some sort of hero’s reward.

I can remember laying on the bottom bunk in a friend’s room, 8 or 9 years old, listening to End of the Movie. I spent a lot of time in that bottom bunk, awake but refusing to move, listening to music on my mothers first generation Ipod. It was in that bed that I discovered music. It was in that bed that I discovered what it meant to feel that a song was speaking directly to you.

People you hate
Will get their hooks into you
They'll pull you down, you'll frown
They'll tar you and drag you through town
But you still don't like to leave
Before the end of the movie

- End of the Movie, John McCrea 

Though perhaps speaking to me is the wrong metaphor for this particular song. It hit more like portraiture. I felt that I was the you in the song long before I knew what it meant to have people you love turn their backs on you, to have people you hate get their hooks into you, to face the struggles which were unimaginable till the moment they happened to me.

I already knew I was stubborn. I already knew things could be hard. I already hated cowards, even as I wrestled with my own fear and learned to lay low, to keep my head down, to cry with out making a sound. I knew I was the kind of person who didn’t like leaving till the end of movie.

And then yesterday happened. Suddenly, the narrative has changed. It is not that I am still waiting for my movie to end. The movie which documents the last 18 years of upheaval is over. I’ve made it. If I’m waiting for anything right now, its to see what the start of the next one will bring.

On to the next, tomorrow,

Weaver