Whirlwind Goodbye/Leaving 4/28

WILL HOCHMAN (hochman@uscolo.edu)
Fri, 23 Apr 1999 11:41:38 -0600 (MDT)

Dear All,

I admit I'm preferential with "w" sounds but no other word than
"whirlwind" could be written as this idea engine. Life rushes tumultously
into my confusing newness. Teachers know the concentration of learning and
emotion and can often and easily be heard to say "the term is ending in a
whirlwind," and preachers know the biblical imagination of creating is
voiced in mysterious charges of wind and words swirling us into belief
which begot even electromagnetism, these pixels of now, a chaos of affairs
that are so totally colliding that I finally know with a little help from
Einstein how tiny particles explode atomically.

Portfolios arriving with a term of writing and human hopes, and I'm not
God but just as you judge these words so must I with an eye that is human
and failing to see enough all the time, but also with heart and care for
what I can give, for how I serve. I'd like to take off in this moment on a
some safe highway, top down in my soon-to-be-sold l968 Karmann Ghia but
I'm here, in my pajamas on phones selling my house, nailing down details
to fly east for a job interview, then flying on to Italy to try and write
an essay on Richard Hugo and war, and I know you know me well enough by
now to know that at this hoped-for writing's core will be poetry and
peace. Just peace...

I surely know my "probs" are none really, and I'm honestly enjoying
their unfolding in any case, but one central ache I must share is leaving
you, my online friends, my family. You touch me and give me life beyond
electrons and beyond anything this writer could have hoped to be part
of...I've lived in Montana, Paris and New York's East Village and known
lots of writers and writing communities, but here, online with you is what
I know and love best. I'm gone, signing off for a month at least, but not
without this last kiss and hush of words and wind, will