215, 214

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Over the weekend, caught up with my friends over lunch at a Japanese restaurant, Kofuku. It's a nice place and we ate a lot. Was meeting my friends after a really long time and it felt...I don't know...a little ghostly. It felt like I was watching a play of shadows on cane curtains and that play involved me meeting friends from long ago. It didn't feel real. For a  long time, I felt very...woolly and gauzy. Very disconnected. I couldn't even imagine why I'd have ever bonded with this group years ago. (We go back a long way, over ten years.) I don't know when specifically my feelings changed but I think, as far as I was concerned, it had. In fact, I was the first one at the restaurant and while I waited, it felt like I'd paid for a ticket to a show and the drama would begin. And the reviews were ambivalent. Somewhere amongst all the talk about food and cities and someone's new project or questioning on why i am not on what's app or whatever, something really seemed to...gape.

Maybe this is what growing apart feels like - moving shadows.

Over the course of the lunch, though, I noticed a friend make a face because she didn't like the green tea ice-cream I was serenading so much. I talked to another one in the dark of a movie hall about her favorite love story. Another friend showed me a picture of a bluebell from her trip. The friend I stayed over with - showed me the specific nuisances that the Uber app puts in the way of eager customers.

I think, for me, when all those tiny personal, individual details dribbled over - that is when the shadows started taking a more solid form. Little moments spent with each of them separately, in a little panel of time that did not come fused with being in a team. I think that, maybe, my days of being in a group are done. Even if it is with people I feel affection for. I had a good time with my friends as the day wore on. When, with each one, I individually remembered the laughs I'd had some forgotten summer.

Maybe that's why we meet the pals from long ago. Because with each of them, you may remember the person they were. And through those memories, you may understand yourself just a little bit better.


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