Convergence

And oh, this is convergence if I ever saw it.

A singing friend is still at my throat. The writing friend and I are working towards peace. My boss is back on the radar. My co-worker is now annoyed with my boss. My eHarmony Matches keep coming in and still, still, I can’t quite shake the feeling that part of it feels a little off because I’m, well, relating with a computer. And yet – Match #1 and I have met up twice, and will see each other again this weekend. I call a publisher I met at the Lit Fest and he says he was just thinking about trying to email me, we talk shop, I send him my writing. My MFA friend and I fall into a few great emails today, both us plugging our little hearts away from opposite sides of the country. An old blog reader who I formed a friendship with a few years ago calls me up, happens to be in the mountains for the weekend, and wants to hang out. My Colorado poet is on my answering machine twice this week, and already, I feel filled up again by his companionship. Rockin’ jeweler Jane and I are closer than ever even though she moved across the country a few months ago. Erica and I, after ten years of friendship (4 of which were on the rugby field) are emailing weekly now, happily sending little messages of goofiness and wildness when inspiration strikes.

The list goes on. Does it all seem disconnected? Or interconnected?

I picture the world in dots, tiny filaments of communication casting out from one dot to another, a small web of life emerging on the canvas in my mind. After so many filaments crossing at once, or even landing in the same spot all at once, one cannot help by try and decipher the image that is presented once all the lines gather.

And perhaps, the final convergence was tonight’s phone call from Cass.

When you have loved someone through stable and unstable times, you can tell right away in the voice (dare I say, in their breath) whether they are calling you from a good or bad place. Tonight, she calls from the good place. And she says those words: “I’m sorry.” And she says more words: “I didn’t call to talk about me, I called to talk about you.” And “Send me your new fiction. I’ll read it. I promise.” And slowly, so slow that if the line was being drawn from the dot of her in Portland, Oregon to the dot of me in Tinyville, NC, well, you might not even be able to see the line grow.

But it does, minute by minute. And we can talk about our writing, the MFA, the professors we love, the tiny publishing victories we’re each seeking. And we can talk about a few of the hard things, too. The intensity. The hurt. The results.

And we both confess: It is harder then we thought to hear each other’s voices. I cry, though I don’t know if she knows it. It’s subtle, but still, the tears flow. The lines from Ben Harper’s song come to mind: When it’s good it’s so, so good and when it’s gone, it’s gone.

And when I hang up I am not hooked. I might be heart-tired, but I am not hooked. I’d never go back to that, 3,000 miles away, loving her madness and sweetness all at the same time. Never, never again.

How nice to know that sometimes, yes sometimes, we actually do learn.