missing

      Once in a while, there will be people you miss too much when you leave them -- so that in your head, they become bigger and deeper and fresher and more golden than they really are. And when you finally see them again after so much waiting, they can't possibly live up to your inflated expectations. And all your anticipation turns flat, like a bottle of soda that's been sitting in the sun. 
       
       But sometimes you see them again, a little tentatively (because you've been disillusioned before), only to find that the way you remember them is just a faint echo of who they really are. That who they are is better than you realized, and that you were right to miss them all along. 

photo by Spencer Fields

This is for my best friend, because he asked for it. 

"'Human beings do not live forever, Reuven. We live less than the time it takes to blink an eye, if we measure our lives against eternity. So it may be asked what value is there to a human life. There is so much pain in the world. What does it mean to have to suffer so much if our lives are nothing more than the blink of an eye?' He paused again, his eyes misty now, then went on. 'I learned a long time ago, Reuven, that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant.'" 


~ from The Chosen by Chaim Potok, page 217

summertime blues

I've been eating vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce. Listening to the Beach Boys. Swinging in my back yard. Biking to the pool.

It's like I'm twelve years old again, barefoot and suntanned, with newly-minted friends and fresh optimism.

And suddenly I realize that June has slipped by altogether. Evaporated like water in this heat.  

Days like these, my biggest worry is that the days will all slide by this quickly, and leave me nothing to remember. That one day I'll wake up and it will be fall, and I'll have bigger worries than the slippery nature of summer.

 photo by McGallo