Return to the Possible

I haven’t heard from this friend in what, two decades?  And we had a proper two-decade catch-up this morning which spanned the mounting of my bicycle, the ride over to the gym and the return home.  Two decades to cover and you have there is some pain and there is some glory to narrate from amongst all the people we both know.  I took a pass on the entire Facebook journey these past fifteen years, but LinkedIn suddenly had me approached this year from thirty-eight angles, from old friends and remote acquaintances sharing me birthday greetings.  And this wonderful friend came through a reconnect with a mutual friend of ours who’d sent me a birthday ‘hello.'  Now we are on wechat so we may as well be neighbors.

I was late by then, for my lunch date.  Surprise.  I wouldn’t have been very late, as I told the guy to head to the Orchard through a back road that got me almost all of the way to my end location until I a fender bender with people who wouldn’t move, meant the short cut was impassible so we had to spin around back and return

The Orchard is always great.  And I spent four hours there, talking with a couple.  The one a new friend, his wife I was meeting for the first time.  They were sitting in the back of a hallway all by themselves.  We’d have a private place with nothing but greenery outside.  The setting helps and end up talking less about now and more about what we want now to become.

I finished one book today.  “The Struggle for Egypt” is from another time, merely a decade ago when the outcome of the protests in Tahrir Square were still unclear.  Now we know the democratic prospects for change were short-lived, the Muslim Brotherhoods taste of power, was short lived and military rule would return swiftly.  And yet it was helpful and fascinating to return to the possible, which is, of course, always still here.  Now I’ve begun Lin Yutang’ “My Country, My People” from 1936.  Another period when anything was possible and truisms we take for granted had yet to be formed and other truisms that have now long been dispelled seemed immutable.

Saturday, 4/27/19