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rackmountThis is the season when all of the old friends who disappeared are making a new appearance. It's delightful. Although weird. They've been through the Slough of Despond, by way of Vanity Fair. These friends.. these are not the party friends, who are all well settled it seems, but my squarer friends. Law firm work friends. Classical music friends. Church friends.
The emails and messages are like this.
Dear M: I realize it's been a long time since we've seen each other [...] The last few years have been weird for me. I finished school, had kids, and my wife came out as a lesbian.
...
Dear M: How nice to reconnect! [...] The last few years have been strange. It turns out B (his wife) is an alcoholic. She started showing up to (music) gigs drunk and then I caught her in flangrante. Then it was two years in and out of rehab and lying, and then, thankfully, she dumped me.
Dear M: How has it been so long! [...] And then it turned out he had another family ...
And so forth.
This is, of course, an improvement on last year's string of suicides. Meanwhile all my party friends are deep suburban, moving up the career ladder and building cribs. So many cribs.
But the silver lining is that everyone seems to be coming out of it. There's a lot of blinking in the sunlight going on, and reconnection, which I very selfishly love. I started reading through the FB feed of one particular new/old friend, who had an idea back when we were working together of doing a series of mass-transit related haiku. I wrote quite a few with and alongside him, which I found a few years ago. And now it seems, he published them in a book (not mine, that would be weird). And he's become an even more extreme version of himself... a pure, intense shot of things I pretend at. Anglo-Catholic, cerebral, and deeply classicist. We aren't alike in terms of personality, but he's what I wish I were like. At least when I've forgotten myself a little.
He's a historian at heart. I am deeply not. I'd forget what I had for breakfast, if I didn't eat the same thing every day. But he's the best version of a historian. He's a connector.
However, as with my other friends going through similar journies, I am left feeling grateful to the breakdown in their lives because I'm not sure we would reconnect without those things happening. And that is a very strange feeling indeed. And I am left remembering what I was like the last time I saw these people, before all this happened.
You remember what we were like.
The emails and messages are like this.
Dear M: I realize it's been a long time since we've seen each other [...] The last few years have been weird for me. I finished school, had kids, and my wife came out as a lesbian.
...
Dear M: How nice to reconnect! [...] The last few years have been strange. It turns out B (his wife) is an alcoholic. She started showing up to (music) gigs drunk and then I caught her in flangrante. Then it was two years in and out of rehab and lying, and then, thankfully, she dumped me.
Dear M: How has it been so long! [...] And then it turned out he had another family ...
And so forth.
This is, of course, an improvement on last year's string of suicides. Meanwhile all my party friends are deep suburban, moving up the career ladder and building cribs. So many cribs.
But the silver lining is that everyone seems to be coming out of it. There's a lot of blinking in the sunlight going on, and reconnection, which I very selfishly love. I started reading through the FB feed of one particular new/old friend, who had an idea back when we were working together of doing a series of mass-transit related haiku. I wrote quite a few with and alongside him, which I found a few years ago. And now it seems, he published them in a book (not mine, that would be weird). And he's become an even more extreme version of himself... a pure, intense shot of things I pretend at. Anglo-Catholic, cerebral, and deeply classicist. We aren't alike in terms of personality, but he's what I wish I were like. At least when I've forgotten myself a little.
He's a historian at heart. I am deeply not. I'd forget what I had for breakfast, if I didn't eat the same thing every day. But he's the best version of a historian. He's a connector.
However, as with my other friends going through similar journies, I am left feeling grateful to the breakdown in their lives because I'm not sure we would reconnect without those things happening. And that is a very strange feeling indeed. And I am left remembering what I was like the last time I saw these people, before all this happened.
You remember what we were like.
