How do you say goodbye?

I was going to write all about my last night in Wyoming. About my trip to the cowboy bar in Sheridan where the ice water is free, an 8 foot 4 inch long rattlesnake skin hangs behind the bar, and hundreds of cattle brands are burned into the rustic wood logs lining the bar. Where the Wurlitzer would play were they to turn off the football game on the TV, where Jim Crumbles sits at the bar, his ass close to sliding out of his pants, but his white hair as neatly braided as Willie's and where Glen Getter, age 29, claims to be an eligible bachelor as of approximately two weeks ago when he got his job pumping for Coal Bed Methane and when he finally got a place of his own.

But here I am stuck in Phoenix, en route home, having missed a connecting flight, and suddenly dreading my apartment with its boxes still unpacked, a discouraging lack of storage space and a newness I haven't yet decided if I like.

Sigh.

I guess adding to my meloncolia is the fact that I just finished a really good book and there's something so disappointing for me in that moment. The moment you close the book and realize there are no more pages, no more stories, no more time to be spent with the characters in whose lives you have just become so engrossed. The moment you have to say goodbye forever. Well, let's just say, I am getting accustomed to that moment.

Add to that the fact that I am no longer officially designated as an artist as my residency is over.

Add to that the fact that I have just left a place I really liked and really liked the way I felt there.

Add to that the fact that it's turning fall and there's all those back-to-school sales in the stores and the light's suddenly much more yellow and the air is sharp and crisp and the leaves are starting to turn and for reasons inexplicable to me, all that makes me unbearably sad.

Add to that the fact that I am returning to my normal life and I don't yet know what that is or what it means or where normal really fits into any thing in my life anyways.

How do you say goodbye? To the season, the story, the place, the person, the reasons we once thought were right?