Ode to a Dear Friend

I returned to you despite all of my own arguments: clocks, schedules, Google calendars, all of which support the false premise of a linear reality.  A leads to B leads to C, and the connections between them are like a one-way highway in which we've all got to move at a speed that makes us uncomfortable - sometimes even sick - but that we condone.

Returning to you feels like tearing myself away and leaving a million things unfinished. It's like jumping off the one true highway, when everyone else seems to be forging ahead in the right direction. But you cannot exist on highways - being as you are, beyond their reach. This requires me to veer off because I can smell the intense perfume of the rose bush collapsing under the weight of the many flowers, the irresistible itch of the pollen around my eyes, and the beating of the tall grass at my calves, like children overwhelmed to see me.

As I walk up the stony path with a thousand stunning weeds, I fear I may have neglected you, but that doesn't make sense. You don't need me. You'd be a home for the birds and the trees without me. Still, you wouldn't be as colorful with the many wild flowers I've spread around, and you wouldn't be bejewelled in stone art. You would survive - even thrive - but you wouldn't be you. Maybe the same goes for me. We become ourselves through one another.

You've been my greatest university - beyond all of the ivy towers I've attended and beyond all life experiences. You've given me the chance to discover that A, B and C each lead in a hundred different directions, and exist together in a web I sometimes catch sight of when I see the morning dew in the spider webs. I cannot say whether you have learned from me. Perhaps it is a crazy thought - you are an island and I am a human - but I don't think so. We're just two beings crossing paths in time and space, and becoming who we are in that intersection.