i'll let you know when i get there

I came across the name of a former acquaintance today and it occurred to me with some surprise that in all these years I had forgotten about him, he had continued to exist.  He's continued to live out the same hours and days as I have, in some removed unknowable place in the world.  He has had heart swells and truly terrible days and humdrum commutes and mornings without alarms and delicious meals and hurried meals and heartache and loss and sour stomachs and good laughs.  He's aged.  He's forgotten people of his own.  This is a mere acquaintance, I'm talking, whose regular presence and then absence from my life was hardly registered.   And yet he remains out there, continuing. "That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse." ok. But to what end?  Who even notices or cares?  Who is this play for and how is my small and ordinary life in any way a contribution toward something?  Though I do suspect that there's something ...

I could write about how perfect the air is here.  How I live on a mountain near the cloud line with a view next to god looking over the city.  How the waterway was lined with cars today full of seniors dressed to the nines, windows rolled down just taking in the day and the scene before them.  Cute dogs nearly outnumbered the people and not a turd to be seen. but instead I'd like to write about how I had to borrow a pen from a person at a cafe today because, despite time and freedom, I somehow forgot one of my own.  In a hurry to return it, I came around a turn quickly and bumped a man's elbow, causing him to splash two hot, full cups of coffee all over the floor and the woman he was with.  In that instant the whole world knew what a clumsy, useless human being I am.  How, despite my efforts to organize, I am a chaotic force.  Hardly adult at all.  Apologizing profusely as the world continued to turn, I wondered if I could ever return to this pe...