A new year is coming. It's still a little jarring to realize that 5785 will be a year without Cohost. Using this website has been a genuine delight, and it's changed the way I interact with the Internet as a whole.
But Rosh Hashanah has always been a time to change. A time to reflect on the past, and look to the future. As the seasons change, and the leaves begin to fall, it feels... right, that if Cohost must go, it goes at this time. An end of an era, and the beginning of a new one, coinciding with a new year.
When RWBY Volume 9 aired last year, we RWBY fans were braced for it to be the final season, given... everything, going on with Rooster Teeth (fuck RT, I'm glad it's dead, but I digress.) Thankfully, the show was picked up by VIZ, so it's presumably not over, but what we got from Volume 9, fittingly... was a story about change. About endings and beginnings, and about letting go of who you think you have to be to embrace the person you are. And to this day, more than any other part of the show, I find myself coming back to the song played over the credits, The Edge. It's deeply nostalgic in a way I can't place, enough to make me sob every time I listen to it. It's about saying goodbye to the past, facing the future... endings and beginnings.
It's just a new beginning, it's just a different ending
I'm really gonna miss Cohost. But I can take everything I learned here, and carry my galus with me into something new.
It's just, it's just beginning, it's just, it's just ending
I don't want to.
My shul moved buildings, away from the building I grew up going to, and I miss it so fiercely it's like dying. I don't want to keep moving forward, I don't want to say goodbye. I loved that building. I loved Cohost. I don't want to lose these things that I love so deeply, I don't want to move on. I want to dig in my roots and declare that I won't be moved, that I'm not going.
But I can't. These things aren't up to me. The shul moved, whether I like it or not. Cohost is shutting down, whether I like it or not.
I attended Selichot services this Havdalah, at a Reform shul that I'd never attended before. The tefilot were printed on printer paper in clear plastic duotangs, with a pianist accompanying, in white-washed walls, a big screen hanging off to the side, and I broke down sobbing, choking on musty books and dusty pews and dark wooden walls and Eggbug and CSS crimes and long rambling posts just expressing love for things people care about and I didn't want to lose any of it, but it slipped through my fingers like water.
A season is set for all things.
A time to be born, and a time to die.
A time to plant, and a time to uproot.
A time to fight, and a time to heal.
A time to tear down, and a time to build up.
A time to weep, and a time to laugh.
A time to wail, and a time to dance.
A time to throw stones, and a time to gather them.
A time to embrace, and a time to shun embrace.
A time to seek, and a time to lose.
A time to keep, and a time to discard.
A time to rip, and a time to sew.
A time to be silent, and a time to speak.
A time for love, and a time for hate.
A time for war, and a time for peace.
Rising like a wave, it's clear
That I'm everything and nothing all at once
I'll meet you at the horizon where we first met
Where I died, I'll be born again
Return again
Return again
Return to the land of your soul
Return to who you are
Return to what you are
Return to where you are born and reborn again
Thank you for everything, Cohost. I don't want to say farewell, but I fear I must.
Well I have a little prophecy for you
An apocalyptic mystery, a clue
As the world becomes like Twitter, we all become like Jews
When Zion is destroyed, the promise will come true
Twitter is all your cities, and Zion is in you
So learn to take it with you, learn to be a Jew