At 4:10 yesterday, in a Starbucks that at one time was a pub called the Varsity Inn, and where i was once arrested, for drinking underaged, i met an old friend (is that the proper term?) whom i'd not seen for more than twenty years... the recounting of his catching me up was interesting at one level, and very much about him, as those monologues are, but during this encounter, i realized that gaps in relationships need to be jumped. catching up sometimes is far less important than digging deeper and seeing if there are any threads left to the relationship that can be rewoven into meaningfulness -- clearly not a relationship as it was as we are not who we were but something of this moment and within this context.
i very much miss real conversations. i miss conversations that explore, imagine, deepen, expand, stimulate, that exchange, elaborate, share, mix. i miss the dining and talking that we used to have and i miss it in some profoundly existential manner that leaves an emptiness somewhat like having eaten cotton candy. in some ways i missed in our phone conversation that dinner/talk. twice in one day. perhaps it is a function of where i am now, surrounded by talk that often truly lacks cohesion/coherence and requires multiple attempts and much interpretive guesswork on my part. so often my thoughts aren't so lucent and my time not mine.
And so i begin these quizzical explorations.
