As a child of 25

Why is it that the stories that hit us the hardest are the ones that present the possiblity that there IS true love, and that we can lose that very love? These stories represent the deepest fear… that life does have a meaning, a pattern, a path, and that we can fall from that path through action or inaction. Any choice we make can take the chance of love away.

As an adult, I have often known that peculiar legacy time brings to the traveler: the longing to seek out a place a second time, to find deliberately what we stumbled on once before, to recapture the feeling of discovery. Sometimes we seach out again even a place that was not remarkable in itself — we look for it simply because we remember it. If we do find it, of course, everything is different. The rough-hewn door is still there, but it’s much smaller; the day is cloudy instead of brilliant; it’s spring instead of autumn; we’re alone instead of with three friends. Or, worse, with three friends instead of alone.

All friendships should begin with an exchange of music. Or an exchange of book titles, like “hey, listen to this song/read this book… then we’ll talk.” In fact, many of my greatest friendships began in something like that. And many of my best friendships are sustained by discussions of our shared favorite bands, or Harry.

Does time flow in a continuous line, or is it more like how a beach feels the waves? Sometimes its barrelling towards you and crashes down, picking you up and twisting and turning… and sometimes it is so slow it just pulls at you, stretching you so thin that it almost aches. I think time was most like that for me this year.

And time, precious, distantly aloof time… time and I have finally learned that we are partners in this dance, and I am ready to act with grace, to curtsy in that way to acknowledge a greater power that can also be a compatriot at times. Perhaps I understand time clearly, for just one short waltz.

He had dawdled over his cigar because he was at heart a dilettante, and thinking over a pleasure to come often gave him a subtler satisfaction than its realisation.