Ah, now this is the Seattle I have come to know... and love? It has been more than a week since I have returned, and today the first rain came down. I know it's cliche to speak of silence other than the sound of rain tapping on the roof and windows, but that's what I'm experiencing right now. There's also the familiar sound of the buses and cars sloshing their way through the streets.

I first realized that I missed (and would miss, once I leave) Seattle while living in New York over the summer. The feeling was not dissimilar to something I experienced after moving away from my beloved Berkeley. The neighborhood streets, the air, the Indian restaurant where Jason and I have had many a candlelit dinner. The water... the glorious view at dusk of the Seattle skyline and Puget Sound as one drives down the freeway bridge into downtown.

I am preparing to face a similar nostalgia as this school year will become a drawn-out goodbye to the life here. It's not as if there was any other way. It's not as if I could stay. Even if I could, it would merely be a postponement of the inevitable. In the end, I'd still need to do it.

And I think that's the terrible thing about life on earth. It's so temporal, temporary... you can only hold so much of it at a time. The places, the years, and the people. Everything constantly shifting, before you're ready for it.

But, perhaps that's what heaven promises to remedy. That is, there will be no goodbyes, only re-acquaintances. For it is "by [Christ] all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible... and in him all things hold together." (Col. 1:16-17) All things made new, superseding the pale - in comparison - glory of the old.