Marta ~ May 10

 

I went walking through town yesterday evening, one of my "summer" past times. It wasn't very summery. I was wrapped in the thick polar fleece jacket I bought way at the beginning of my Woodstock sojourn, over 20 years ago, for $150 in a shop that long ago gave way to an emporium selling Woodstock tee shirts.

 

Before I left for my amble I texted Andrea and asked if she'd like to chat. A quick response: yes! Usually, our chats are on weekends, and I usually initiate one when it feels like alot of material has built up with which I can help create a lively conversation. Yesterday, I just wanted some kind of comfort, connection, and was not sure this was the right move. It would be worse to be disappointed than to have held onto my solitude. 

 

I broke into the tender subject of my state of mind pretty quickly, and pretty quickly she identified what could easily be causing it. Other people aren't usually right about what you're going through, but her words had an immediate calming effect. They felt right. 

 

Washington Square Park. 

 

Washington Square Park was a meeting 40 years in the making. Yes, there had been one or two or three little forays into that territory, one every decade or so, but not a full-on, clear-eyed desire to connect. And that it foundered and disappointed so greatly has not been easy to digest. 

 

I really did have hopes that with someone I had known for 50 years there was a good chance of a rich kind of friendship. I promise I did not have romantic visions, but I did envision some kind of meaningful reunion all these many miles further down the life road. And instead to yet again experience that my input to that reunion goes almost unseen, and that his is almost always off-key has been rewiring my neurons in a big way. 

 

It felt very stabilizing to look at my despair through this lens. The huge ocean of feeling began to dry up around the edges. Like a mirage, the closer you get to it. Though I cannot imagine there never being a little piece of it left, shimmering, somewhere in the corner. Washington Square Park will not drop, forgotten, to the ground like a dead twig off a branch. Perhaps because it began so very early in my long string of life adventures, enduring as an almost-promise  through all of them.