We're having our 45th reunion tomorrow night at a little place in Danbury called Two Steps Down. When I went to our 40th, it was the first high school reunion I'd attended. It was shocking for me to realize how few people I knew, and how few among them I remembered. A couple of people said nice things about encounters we'd had decades before and how meaingful they'd been. That and seeing my first girl crush made it worthwhile.
Tomorrow evening, I don't really expect to see anyone I knew. I'm going on the off chance that I'll connect with someone in a way I can't imagine now. Just sort of serve myself up to the possibilities. I want to honor the years that have passed since we walked the halls of DHS, all I didn't know about them (and myself) then and all I don't know now. I hope I get the chance to look someone in the eye and share the awareness that for all the time that's passed, life is very short but maybe here's a chance to touch each other in a way we didn't then.
Don't think I don't know that it could be a real snooze. I might leave the place feeling as alienated as I felt as a high school girl, at a loss about what to say and hearing little or nothing I can engage with. I just think it's worth a shot. There are so many chances we miss, and as the evening gatha says with such clarity and kindness, "This night your days are diminished by one."
The Unwritten
Inside this pencil
crouch words that have never been written
never been spoken
never been taught
they’re hiding
they’re awake in there
dark in the dark
hearing us
but they won’t come out
not for love not for time not for fire
even when the dark has worn away
they’ll still be there
hiding in the air
multitudes in days to come may walk through them
breathe them
be none the wiser
what script can it be
that they won’t unroll
in what language
would I recognize it
would I be able to follow it
to make out the real names
of everything
maybe there aren’t
many
it could be that there’s only one word
and it’s all we need
it’s here in this pencil
every pencil in the world
is like this
-W.S. Merwin
I hope it is an interesting time, Susan. I look forward to hearing about it. I think it's courageous and perceptive of you to move on the premise (the premise I think is theoretically and philosophically 'correct,' but to act on it is a whole other matter) that the decades separating us from high school in some cases have also given us, taught us things that enable a richer way or expressing what those pencils carry. Have fun, dear friend.
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