The city of course is never the same. At least until the next film when it is miraculously rebuilt. But when you watch Godzilla movies you’re not focused on the city. Godzilla’s personality is simply to big to allow anything else on the screen. And don’t give me the digital Godzilla, that phony coopted film with Mathew Broderick, I want the real thing because sometimes there is no greater joy than watching a man in a rubber suit knock down buildings.

Because it’s Godzilla’s Tokyo.

In many ways it was Rohannon’s house. Although the runt of the litter her personality was that big. She came with her own sound effects. When she roared it sounded like Godzilla. It’s how the nickname of “Baby Godzilla” came about and it was the first greeting all visitors received. She was letting you know you were walking into her house.

She was the matriarch of her domain. Organizing all the other cats, including her two brothers Cha’lar and Midi, into their places. The living room was arranged by where she wanted to sit that day. And if that spot happened to be your chest (she had a certain fondness for large boobs) well then you were part of that arrangement. Rohannon would grumble, fuss and roar until her seat was properly arranged.

And more than the days of actor’s in rubber suits I will miss her something fierce.

Dress it up in a cold place with pews not designed for reverence, where the staccato of the receptionist’s high heels against tile taps out the message that this is formal grief. Dress it for around the house, where nervous friends who don’t know, cannot know what to say flit between vegetable trays in the dinning room and drinks on the patio. Dress it down at a tea house as you watch Jasmine Dragon Pearls unfold their legs in scalding water and pretend that small talk is all that’s going on. Dress it for long walks on the beach at night when the sand looks like moonscape and white noise of the waves sets your tempo as you cry in the shadow of a lifeguard tower.

What are these goodbyes? We do not know how to hold them, how to console them, how to tell them it will be okay. With each goodbye we are tired and weary, searching for that moment where we can begin to shape our lives again and wondering what form we will choose.

Then there is the long drive through the San Joaquin Valley. Then there is the house filled of memory and echo. And then this too shall pass.

I have always equated times like these to sitting at a greyhound bus station, waiting for a bus whose schedule I don’t know surrounded by people whom I don’t want to approach and can’t really talk to. Boom city is my bus station. And I find myself pacing.

Pacing because I am anxious for news from Mercy Hospital in San Diego. Pacing as I manically peel back the bubbles of paint rust has caused on the side of the trailers. Pacing as I hear that the blood that keeps seeping into his brain is at least not any worse than it was since the last CT scan. Pacing as I find myself replanting a small blade of grass that on one fibrous root has forced its way out from under the hot gravel parking lot to seek air and sky. Pacing because as I hear that although responding to physical stimulus he now hasn’t woken up for seven days. Pacing as I blow on a spider web, which works like a doorbell, so that its sea shell colored in habitant comes out to visit with me. Pacing because Jenn’s father is in the hospital and all I can do is hold down the fort.

I don’t remember the time in between the pacing. It is filled with the buzzing of negotiation and numbers being yelled out as fireworks are bought and sold wholesale. I imagine this is like a pyros wall street.

Today as my neighbors exchange salvos of roman candles, mortars and brightly colored artillery shells, the bus I am waiting for still has not come into the station. I wish I knew what its schedule was, I wish I knew that its passengers were okay.