Following is what may eventually be the opening to the thing I am working on, which will simply go by Untitled for now. After the jump, a wall of text. It appears to be a story about departures. It is unnecessarily bleak, but that’s what departures will do for you.

In September of 2008, there was a departure. It was probably completely unremarkable, completely artificial, a passing moment in time in a life which has been, in some ways, a long series of departures. It was not particularly glamorous. It was in the city of Spokane, Washington, on a day which was partly cloudy, too early to be autumn, too late to be summer. I drove two hours to get there from Moses Lake, parked in a vacant part of the mall parking lot, and walked. I had hoped to catch dinner somewhere with a table and service and coffee, and sit opposite my old friends, and do what it is I’ve always done best, which is talk about nothing. It is a talent most useful for departures and a talent I seldom use at them.

So it was in silence we spent most of the evening, watching a movie I’d never heard of in a genre I never cared much for. After, I pretended I liked the film, and maybe I even did, and we stood around, and they talked about the rest of the evening. I was, of course, superfluous. This was, I was certain, the last time I would see either of them, who had briefly played such a prominent role in my life. We didn’t share a meal, or talk much. There was a joke that wasn’t very funny, and after we stood around for a while we dispersed. There were awkward glances exchanged, and for a moment it looked as if embraces might be exchanged. But it was not to be, of course.

Later, all I could think about was the smile I wore the whole time I was there. It was a sad, wistful smile, resigned. Spokane had been for years a town of nostalgia, of departures, where the past lived on for me uneasily. Or at least ghosts of it.

I wrote about this departure once, elsewhere, probably many times. I’ve talked about how words are useless in the hands of a writer and storyteller. I always said after that it rained on the way home, but it didn’t. The sky was clear. I’ve spent many pages trying to find poetry in it. I often thought that maybe I deserved it, that this was the way of things, but it wasn’t that. Life continued and nothing had changed, except they saw the look in my eyes that said I was already lost.

When I drove home I was frustrated. I sang loudly in the car to keep my mind from thinking about anything, keeping my mind focused on the music, until my voice was hoarse and I was out of songs and there was nothing left but the hum of the highway. The radio was broken and the batteries had died on my iPod. I thought. It is something I have never been able to escape, in the end.