It's been a strange few weeks. KS noticed (I'm not sure anyone else did) that I haven't been posting much. Mostly, I've been working -- pretty much (and literally) from 9 am to 11 pm every Monday through Friday, and then stints on the weekends. Why? It's hard to say. At its core, something to do with pride, I guess. That when you make a commitment, you see it through. All in service of a corporate website, so it makes it hard to justify in big picture terms. Put another way, the picture keeps getting smaller.
With that as my maudlin backdrop, a few strange things have unsettled the strain and tumult of the past few weeks. A correspondence renewed over Facebook and email with one of the few friends from high school with whom I shared sensibilities was left hanging when I got word through the small-town grapevine that he had died suddenly in Colombia. RIP, ABS. Very strange to look at the last un-replied to email.
Catching up with BS over Thanksgiving, at the Knitting Factory, to see his band play. A friend of over nine years, and strange that, from the audience, I couldn't recognize him. Over dinner later in the week, we caught up and it was great -- one of the real pleasures in my life are my friends, and the ease with which old friendships can be continued, even after years absence. Long may that run.
Running into two old friends on an over-crowded Amtrak train to New England on Thanksgiving eve, and taking the excuse to get a little more drunk on that long ride home (which then continued on into the night with my father and our friend from Nepal).
Thanksgiving dinner with my family and the Ps, which has turned into quite a wonderful tradition -- truthfully, five generations at the table (three of theirs, two of ours) -- and the accompanying conversation, at which I seem to have to play the fulcrum, but in which everyone plays a role. Food was great, people was great, even if the evenings, as we push on into the years, are draped in the garments of getting older: age-wrought changes in memories and expectations.
Still, a lot to be thankful for, and I'm glad that I can continue to celebrate this particular holiday in New England, where it feels most right.
With that as my maudlin backdrop, a few strange things have unsettled the strain and tumult of the past few weeks. A correspondence renewed over Facebook and email with one of the few friends from high school with whom I shared sensibilities was left hanging when I got word through the small-town grapevine that he had died suddenly in Colombia. RIP, ABS. Very strange to look at the last un-replied to email.
Catching up with BS over Thanksgiving, at the Knitting Factory, to see his band play. A friend of over nine years, and strange that, from the audience, I couldn't recognize him. Over dinner later in the week, we caught up and it was great -- one of the real pleasures in my life are my friends, and the ease with which old friendships can be continued, even after years absence. Long may that run.
Running into two old friends on an over-crowded Amtrak train to New England on Thanksgiving eve, and taking the excuse to get a little more drunk on that long ride home (which then continued on into the night with my father and our friend from Nepal).
Thanksgiving dinner with my family and the Ps, which has turned into quite a wonderful tradition -- truthfully, five generations at the table (three of theirs, two of ours) -- and the accompanying conversation, at which I seem to have to play the fulcrum, but in which everyone plays a role. Food was great, people was great, even if the evenings, as we push on into the years, are draped in the garments of getting older: age-wrought changes in memories and expectations.
Still, a lot to be thankful for, and I'm glad that I can continue to celebrate this particular holiday in New England, where it feels most right.
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