And Another Return, Again

And another return,
Again,
And again,
To a place once a stranger and now a best friend. Even as best friends are forever the same, comfortable and ageless but are also contradictorily strangers with many hidden parts we may never know, and always changing though they stay the same.

Familiarity. As though I never left. And yet the changes that have overtaken this town prove to me that for at least a moment I did leave and in my absence we have both continued our lives and are hence different. And like friends separated for a distance I am anxious to dive into the space between us and unveil the new things that lay hidden in the void, to catch up on what has happened since we last spoke, since we last sat across from each other, or walked in step, allowing time to slowly pass between us and through us leaving not a second to scatter in the wind, even as the wind is noted and appreciated for its place here beside the rhythm of our feet.

And as all memories are only a collaboration of moments imbedded imperfectly by a hopeful and imaginative mind, so this town, so vivid in my recollections whenever I call upon it, is in fact also slightly obscured when compared with such previous musing. Even more so difficult to comprehend is the comparison of reality with the vividness of memory, to take the leap outside one’s mind and into the present, remembering that you are here now and every action taken and not taken you are responsible for, with no going back for do-overs, a choose your own adventure without alternate endings. And that those choices have never before taken place for you in reality, that as much as you have remembered and imagined the days to come will be unmistakably diverse from all things conjured.

And even as much as this town is a continuation of a previous collaboration of moments now made memories it is in itself a new beginning. As each moment is. As each journey and each day and each friendship is. A beginning deserving itself of a clean slate, its own personal tabula rosa even as it may be a black page in a bulging book with writing in the margins. And so I vow to take note of every new rhythmic step as it regularly hits the ground, taking none for granted as with the sunrise every morning, realizing each time it is a gift and not promised to us, and I will feel every breeze as it scuttles around me and dear friend as we continue to know each other here and now, in the present.