The juice of life

Moving tomorrow, I have spent hours in my room today filing papers, receipts, letters--and in the midst of filing new letters in an old letter file, I come across a letter written to a boy I had loved in college. This was post-college when he was (at that time, briefly) engaged to someone else, but we were still exchanging letters. Rereading them now, I am struck with nostalgia, by that bright young girl I was--just out of college, living in New York with my best friend, in love with everything. Reading over those letters and feeling the warmth in them, I wonder why we parted in anger in 2001. Six years later, I no longer resent him. I am free of him, free of the need for him, and therefore can appreciate again the beauty in those words we once wrote to each other. And I wonder--should I try to contact him again (he is sitting there on Facebook... [damned Facebook]), for the sake of the friendship we once had, or let it lie?

In honour of my recent birthday, I'll quote the P.S.S.S. from the letter I had written him in March 2000 (i have the fault of never being able to throw away anything I've written, and thus I [used to] photocopy my letters.) I was twenty-two.

"It's a bit scary how time seems to race (sorry for the cliche) more and more these years, where the twenties blur past. Soon, we'll be thirty and wonder where it all went. But no, there will be years then. There is so much juice in life--so much sun and wind to gulp in. Sometimes, I just have to pause in the middle of these flurried sidewalks and look past all the buildings at the spring sky. This morning, I didn't jaywalk like usual but stopped and waited for the Walk sign. The sun came down and touched me. I was still for all of thirty seconds. That occasional stillness--that is what makes life worth it--those brief moments of God.