The magic of Elton John.........

I was half touched and half disturbed to find that someone had apparently been playing 'song for Guy' in my honour his weekend - a sentiment that was tarnished by the fact that it's about his gay lover as I recall, and so not something I'm entirely comfortable with.

Anyway, the point being he said that: sorry seems to be...blah blah blah.

In my humble opinion he could have been talking cobblers. After this weekend I am fairly convinced that one at least as hard if not more so is the word goodbye. Don't worry I haven't turned into some soft southern lad; but I have discovered through the medium of no small amount of packing, a not small enough amount of singing, one 'angry dragon', something that had some kind of baracrdi in it, some probably 'best forgotten' dancing and some definitely not 'best forgotten' friends that the art of saying goodbye is a tricky one.
It boils down in my estimation to this: you have a finite amount of time to see a certain amount of friends, during which you need too unfold all they ways you love them, assure them that you'll miss each other and that you do love them, and fight the desire to make some grand but slightly odd gesture from a heart which is probably (at least slightly) broken, and yet in line with your real self.
Which basically means you can't. Part of the amazing thing about loving people and being part of their lives is that you almost get too close to see them anymore or to be able to describe what it is you're part of. All you can do is try and look at one bit at a time and put together that sort of weird but beautiful picture of them in words and actions. Tough you might think.
So anyway, as the fact that I'll miss everyone I love is beginning to dawn on me I thought it appropriate to yell into the void that I love them and hope that somewhere it sticks. You all gave me more than I can say over the time I knew you. If you're reading this that probably means you.

So in my time of reflection this evening I came up with this equation to explain the problem of goodbye:

let U = the unfolding of time, G1 = having Good friends and g2 = feelings arising when G1 is absent(¬G1), time (T) is proportional when going away to busyness (B), r=real self and E = and existential expression

and so: business contracts time's passage proportionally to the amount of good friends you have, which is in turn balanced against ¬G1 which is partly dependent on an expression of love relative to your real self. Or:

BU"G1-><-g2 ER