It’s strange how things happen, how friendships disappear, how people are privately erased from the tableaux of one’s mind and connections, how people seem almost to have vanished from the globe. The curiosity is as often accompanied by mutual estrangement, evaporation of warmth and meaningfulness. The telephone calls and emails stop. The urges to call or write quit. The memories begin to fade. The link is lost. The barque has sailed.

Yet in spite of the disappearance, thoughts linger. There is as frequently hidden not far beneath the gleaming surface a trace of remembrance or a question of the unwitting transition. Perhaps the feathers of memory are aligned with accusations, inventions of blame and dissimilarities or even illness. But with time, those forces dissolve and they too lose their weight. What once was a palpable acquaintance becomes nothing more than a  piece of the past, a broken piece of glass, a marker along an admittedly remarkable journey of travel, the retirement of a commitment along the way, an historic feature of life and personality, a reflection of the moment whether for good or bad.

I’ve said it so many times before that I have at last convinced myself of my demonstrable and irreversible decline: Life owes me nothing.  This monotonous though salutary observation is not one cultivated by anything more than baroque plentitude, a life of shameful abundance and fortuity. My qualification of the unparalleled surplusage of life is its own overripe rendition of gratitude; namely, the queer way in which things in life have happened, the rarity and marvel of life, its unforgiving magnanimity, scope and beauty.

I’ve hardly time to project upon anything more than the bountiful present. But nonetheless I persist to remark, funny how things happen…

My venture on the planet began and was propelled initially by the austerity of a Scotch broth, chapel once a day and twice on Sundays, the Church of England naturally, Number One dress and regimental wear plus the business of house captains and prefecture. There was nothing allowed to interrupt the day from ceremony, athleticism and application. Sleep was a casualty not an entitlement. Then followed the teenage diversions and abuses of burgeoning adulthood and discovery, removal from the ropes of masters and parents, an awakening frivolity tempered shortly by tradesman’s training and fitting into the predictable molds of society. And from all this, all these adventures and near misses, from having challenged and threatened myself at times on the edge of the horizon, I have astonishingly escaped unscathed though battered.

Funny how it happens…