What is crying?

My throat swells up, my sinuses ache, my mucus membranes go into overdrive, my vocal cords tense and my voice becomes uncontrollable. My diaphragm has a mind of its own. Sometimes I will just sit there with my eyes squinched up, exhaling in anguish, revitalized and cleansed as a deeb sob emerges. For such an uncomfortable-sounding process, it brings so much peace.

Grief can be very sharp. After sitting there, sobbing wordlessly, tears dripping from the end of my nose into the carpet, it's somehow duller, more distant, wrapped up in a fog that I somehow generated as I cried. Coherency is not required. Words or descriptions or details are superfluous. Adjectives are too defined, and to use them would be to cut corners, to digitize an analog process. Crying is the most poignant expression of sorrow, deeper and more primal than poetry, more satisfying and truer than rational discussion. Pure, unabashed sobbing cannot be childish or embarassing or ugly.

I've cried out of frustration - which is hot and angry and thin. I've cried out of anger, which is itself frustrating.

But that wonderful, cathartic, reduced-to-quivering-jelly sobbing session is elusive and powerful, and it doesn't happen very often, since it is born only of true sorrow. It happened last night after I told Kokopelli that we would be moving to Montreal. She told me that I had so much potential, urged me to go to music school, lamented that I wouldn't be her student. She called me a brilliant, dedicated student. I'm not sure if I believe any of those things, but hearing them from somebody I respect so much... I realized what I'm giving up.