When two friends see each other after a long time or in a new far flung location where they decided to meet, and they hug, I always picture comets hurtling around the sun embracing as they pass for a brief moment of rootedness. Or two kids swinging on a swing, reaching out to grab the other’s hand, or two people trying to find each other in rolling ocean waves, the feeling of “Ugh, caught you! I was spinning so fast, but now I found a safe place to hold on.”
But the truth is we’re always spinning around, looking for that foothold of refuge—both people can only become anchors when they find each other.
When two bodies circumnavigate their worlds, through the air and on the ground and in their own minds, and then wake up to find their friend standing in front of them, after being thousands of physical or metaphysical miles apart, to then find them as close as two humans can possibly be, hugging, embracing, holding on for dear life, “Thank God I found you again. Let’s have a drink.”
How surreal that through a coordination of effort and time and decisions we can find ourselves occupying the same square foot of all the square feet in the universe. What fates conspired to bring us together at this point, in this home, on the edge of this continent or that one. How surreal that we can only be in one point of space and time, and our friends can’t be with us, and we are fated to orbit the same center until we hold on to each other again.
