On Meeting A Dear Friend

Since I met a dear friend A.W recently, after nearly a decade, I have realized the impossibility of memory and the stupidity of desire. We met in a haze of sunshine, in a place previously familiar to us. Time has added its signs to us both and we quickly recognized these. It was not a new meeting but a continuation of the last one, only this time we did not talk about being acrobats. I have started my deterioration process long ago and I sensed so had he.

We did not suffer for lack of words, in fact prolixity was dancing its wings. We interrupted each other and suffered. Obviously we sat on a bench, in a garden formerly liked, looking at stones adored once in a world of hope and without cynicism. I remember now that I looked straight when I talked, shielding him from cigarette smoke which light breeze blows into faces. We did not remember old times because that was too tiring.

Time flew. We walked through corridors sometimes hated and mostly ignored. Faces had disappeared, the trees shrunk in the glow of a volatile sun of memories. We talked about present times, times of discontent, bright melancholy in different worlds, beyond different seas, across oceans that must be heaving. We surmised and perhaps lied too. Yet, I sensed it was the natural thing to do.

Things change. The awful sadness of time makes one grow old. Many other people have grown older and some are simply resigned to waiting and patience. We have left behind that time, a time when I thought only others lie to themselves, times of idealism, without disgust, when eyes shine, faces glow, mornings are warm.

Yes, we left then, I to collect those words and spread their sadness and think of more comfortably numb times. I told him about the deterioration process and how it must be continued. I remember the frantic speed of that meeting and the inevitable slow fast parting.