On the Deterioration of Things

Well, well - wouldn't you know. This morning the inbox flashes up an overseas response to this long-ago email of August 4th:

Hi J.

Things have been going better over the last few days. I am now studying at an FE college - Psychology, Sociology, and Film and Media studies. Enjoying it so far, although it's rough being older than everyone else!

I'd love to see you again but I worry that things will get messed up (again). I don't want things to deteriorate into mind games. When I say again, I'm not referring to you personally. It's just the way things seem to be done these days.

L.

Wonderfully cryptic. There will be a trip to Oxford at some point in the Spring of 2007. Who can say today how we may choose to play this out tomorrow? Such reflection and bit of nostalgia is enough to make me smile - on a Wednesday, that is something.

The immediate future holds amplified promise too. Who will we cross paths with again, who will remain lost, as we jet from this to that? What aliases invented, what new lifelong acquaintances found? Ah, for the profound possibilities engendered by the road... Those possibilities, I suppose, always open to us. But never are they seized with the same gusto as when liberated from daily custom and surroundings.

Serial writer Tom French describes the three most beautiful words, not as "I love you", but rather "to be continued..." How right thou art, my friend. Tomorrow afternoon, safely stowed onto the airport bus, I will look out the window and smile and think thoughts of optimism and clarity and if the answer is no I can change your mind and what is to happen next.

Sometimes you can taste the evening's fall in that first sip. Those are the best moments - when you sense the coming deterioration and yet simmer defiantly, exultantly amidst that inevitability.

And so it begins...