Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling ... of that something which you were born desiring and which, between the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for?
~ C.S. Lewis
And so, I have flown from the Pacific around my ankles with the sandpipers' daily newsfeed to the banks of the Thames. Backwards in time to spend time with an old college friend, ex- ex-pat, entire soulmate. I haven't been in the UK since my Westmont semester abroad, when we larked about Canterbury, Cambridge, Edinburgh, the Lake District. 30+ years ago. The cultural divide still surprises, all the curious street names flooding by on the taxi ride from the airport (soon to be dredged up from the river bottom of my jet-lagged mind.) Leg stretching on the queen's walk along the facelifted river banks (why do I think of Sally Potter's film Orlando here?) I almost stumble on a streetwoman listing under a bridge, like a gray bird caught by a cat and released with a wing dislodged from it's breast, spare some change? spare some change? her three note song a whippoorwil's call. Day reflects off tower bridge, then dies in the lone apple tree's white blooms
Now it's 3 a.m. and I watch the waxing moon set over the inky Thames. A pre-dawn breeze riffles the surface of this liquid mixing chamber; molecules eddy through centuries-- barges, bards, bell tolls swirl through bridges as our attentions anchor the drifting past.
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