simmer

A low boil, even, on the back burner.  The realization, after some basic maths, that come late August (which, admittedly, is a full 5 months away) it will be 15 years since I met a friend. An ex-friend? A friend past? South African lawyer friend.  Tuesday passed (or Thursday. Is it bad that I've forgotten even the specifics of the "day" that indicated things had gone too far without resolution? Is it indicative of some friendship carelessness, or worse, some fundamentally self-involved issue?)  To be honest, I don't really care. I suspect there's a gesture to make.  Not that anyone in New York seems to be talking to me at the moment, although I'm unclear on what I've done (other than being a self-involved drama queen, but, surely, that's not new.....) or how I've offended, or even if....Maybe things just fade, and then faded, fade again, and my own tendency to reminiscence is a liability rather than an asset, a ball and chain rather than a claim to a more thorough understanding.  Anyway, a gesture. A letter, a mix CD, a Stoppard play.  Handwritten, perhaps, rather than typed or emailed.  Packaged and sent rather than Amazoned.  Not because it even matters, to some extent, what her reaction is (although, of course, that's not quite trivial).  Mostly because I'm feeling my bright and shiny future seems to have lost just a bit too much of my past, and that there's value, there, beyond the dark and dismal, and to the happy bits that happened, too.  So many people have loved me over the years, and I them, and it feels that I'm in touch, I'm connected, with so few of them.  That pains me.  I never meant, never expected, things to end up that way.  South African Lawyer friend, I know you don't read this, which makes it easier to let you know that there is, someday sometime soonish (post April 18, most likely) a letter coming your way. Although if you forget my birthday, there may be a brief delay while I forgive you, yet again.