Sleep, sleep; in thy sleep, little sorrows sit and weep: 12.16.08

Well, hi there.

So, last night I went out and had drinks with J, who I hadn't seen in (literally) 15 years. It was fine, just fine. Fun, actually. But the point is, I realized in talking to him I had these huge blind spots swallowing up, oh, 60% of my memories from that period of time. In all truthfulness, I realized this before we sat down with wine glasses at the ready. In my mental prep for the meeting I ran ye olde J&R circa 1993 up the flag pole and came back with...four, maybe five concrete real memories. Disturbing.

So, look. This blog isn't read by many and I've lost track of who I even have shared this with over the years. But I can't let that happen again. And it's infuriating that I have such a clear, detailed record of the last few years and such yawning gaps for many others.

Maybe I shouldn't have spent all my time mucking around with short stories in college, no? Then I would've been dutifully journaling like any good little writer. Sigh.

J dropped some excellent comments last evening, by the by. I remembered the way he talks sometimes holds up so well it's like you're reading it. Like his comment about when something is actually happening and you're standing there talking and your face is big and the other person's face is big in front of you, but you don't remember that. You remember that you looked at your shoe or that later on you went in the kitchen and ran the water. Something like that.

Naturally, such nostalgia-steeped evenings are as useful as they are bittersweet (as we know, my favorite all-time emotion). I am really a believer, now that the years have started to make a mean little coil here at my feet, that it's the people you meet that truly shape your life. Sure, sure, what you do, whether you choose this or that is what's really driving the train, but at the end? It's the people that came along as part of those decisions, maybe as products of those decisions, I don't know. All I know is, after spending Sunday trotting around with M and having a just a nice afternoon, and joking with J last night, or chatting with J on the phone last weekend, stopped randomly on the stair with a boot in one hand and a sock in the other, or talking with C on the phone last night to give my perfume-addled ego a little pat and off to bed--it comes back to good friends, old friends or even occaisional friends who come along with you wherever you go.