Cogito, Ergo Sumana for 2006 January 6 (entry 0)

# 06 Jan 2006, 11:16PM: A Long Goodbye: A zillion people, including people who never worked with me or are no longer at Salon, came to my goodbye lunch at Taylor's Automatic Refresher and my goodbye party at Town Hall (a restaurant/bar on Howard). I was touched.

This weekend: a zillion people want to come over, to see us one last time before we go, to help us move boxes into other, larger boxes, to buy us dinner and drinks, to give back borrowed books and take away unwanted furniture.

We are so busy, so frazzled, and so lucky.

I'm listening to Vienna Teng and to the William Shatner/Ben Folds collaboration. I'm watching the house empty, pouring my life into cardboard boxes, keeping track of a thousand details, and convincing myself (with Leonard's help) that it'll all be okay.

Maxine Hong Kingston wrote in The Woman Warrior that it's tough to distinguish the layers of one's heritage. What comes from your parents, and what from theirs, and what from your village, and what from being your ethnicity, and what just from your own idiosyncratic history?

Saying goodbye is like that. All at once, I say goodbye to Salon, and to my loose affinity with Berkeley, and to BART, and to Northern California, and to almost all my friends, and to San Francisco, and to the futon I've had since 1999, and to the comfy brown chair I've had since 1991....

The rituals help. I sent the mass email, Subject: Farewell. There will be more. It's never enough.