Friends.
I'm listening to some music by Michael Hewett right now, and it's bringing back some really fond memories of our trip to India last year, when Andrea and I spent a ton of time with Michael and Nicole, two wonderful people we haven't seen since. I really miss them both. Dunno when we'll see them next.
And I was just reading my friend Kimberly's blog. Haven't seen her in a long time.
And I had a nice chat with Mark Epstein what was it, two months ago? And I've been meaning to call Lois for about a month now, but I suck at phone calls, and I haven't yet.
And I was thinking about how nice it would be to be able to hang out in Warwick with my family. And another trip to Austin would be nice. Perry and I might do some hacking together soon, but I haven't actually hung out with him in several years, because he no longer goes to the conferences I go to.
It's weird that even though I'm surrounded by friends whom I dearly love in Arizona, there are at least as many friends I hardly get to see outside of the state.
I'm sure this is one of the six sufferings. There's a word in Tibetan for someone who's still in the cycle of suffering: drowa. One who goes. What a metaphor. To see everybody in my life that I love would be a road trip of epic proportions. Am I blessed to have so many wonderful people in my life, or cursed that I can't see them?
Drowa's real meaning, the one that hits home, comes when you hear the synonym, sosor kyewo. A person who is born alone. We all move from life to life alone. We can't bring friends and loved ones with us. We are the ones who go one by one. We can't even have our friends with us in this life, when we would dearly love to.
A good man, someone who I've known for about seven years, who's been very kind to a lot of people I know, went on that journey today. He got cancer about a year after I met him, and we've been watching him come and go, from health to sickness, to a nice long remission, but finally to decline and departure. A valley out at Diamond Mountain is named after him. It seems like if anyone can hope for a kind welcoming party on the other end of his journey, he can. Maybe he'll show up at DM in twenty years. I hope so.
And I was just reading my friend Kimberly's blog. Haven't seen her in a long time.
And I had a nice chat with Mark Epstein what was it, two months ago? And I've been meaning to call Lois for about a month now, but I suck at phone calls, and I haven't yet.
And I was thinking about how nice it would be to be able to hang out in Warwick with my family. And another trip to Austin would be nice. Perry and I might do some hacking together soon, but I haven't actually hung out with him in several years, because he no longer goes to the conferences I go to.
It's weird that even though I'm surrounded by friends whom I dearly love in Arizona, there are at least as many friends I hardly get to see outside of the state.
I'm sure this is one of the six sufferings. There's a word in Tibetan for someone who's still in the cycle of suffering: drowa. One who goes. What a metaphor. To see everybody in my life that I love would be a road trip of epic proportions. Am I blessed to have so many wonderful people in my life, or cursed that I can't see them?
Drowa's real meaning, the one that hits home, comes when you hear the synonym, sosor kyewo. A person who is born alone. We all move from life to life alone. We can't bring friends and loved ones with us. We are the ones who go one by one. We can't even have our friends with us in this life, when we would dearly love to.
A good man, someone who I've known for about seven years, who's been very kind to a lot of people I know, went on that journey today. He got cancer about a year after I met him, and we've been watching him come and go, from health to sickness, to a nice long remission, but finally to decline and departure. A valley out at Diamond Mountain is named after him. It seems like if anyone can hope for a kind welcoming party on the other end of his journey, he can. Maybe he'll show up at DM in twenty years. I hope so.
posted by Ted Lemon at 12:36 PM
3 Comments:
Sometimes I think the industrialized world is building the Lonely Society. For all the flaws of village life, there was generally less work per day, and people were simply closer, so you didn't have to plan to factor in nearly two hours of travel time to see someone who lives in the same city. Someone (you?) was writing not so long ago about meeting an old woman who had lived her whole life in a village that was an hour from Paris by train, yet she had never been there. Part of me pitied her, and part of me envied her.
I don't think that was me, but I've certainly met people like this. On the other hand, I remember trekking in Nepal back in '93 and running into a Nepali fellow who knew some friends of mine from California, and had been there himself.
I can't really find it in myself to say that the modern state of the world is a bad thing, because there are a lot of people I know well and am enriched by knowing, whom I would never have met without the mobility that our society brings.
Speaking of which, you and Emma should come over some time for brunch and have some home-made cappuccinos!
Oh, given the choice between hoping I was stuck in a good village and living in the 21st century, I'll go with what we've got.
While trying to tweak it a bit, of course.
And brunch with cappuccino would be lovely!
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