I miss Sohini and Niva and Elinam and Lars and Paul and Ben and Chanda and Jeanne and Annie and Dipti. I miss too many people, but not for the reasons people think I do.

I thought about them and others at the lake during high tide, sheltered by a copse of oak trees and nursing a few beers by myself, listening to sad songs and watching the moon, a luminescent string of freshwater pearls that floated across the lake. Sullen, masked birds brooded, like so many phantoms of an opera whose last aria I have yet to hear.

I do this alot, you know, I listen to sad songs and watch sullen birds and think about people regardless of where they are in my life; I am not an instinctively happy person.

But I don't think I would have it any other way, really, I wouldn't be me as a blithe happy-go-lucky party girl. Today Jimmy commented, You're intense and distant; you come from a family of distant and intense people. And it's true, this observation: I love people, but I love peripatetically, anxiously, with the restless, insatiate eye of an outsider, quietly observing the beauty of a person or a city, with the knowledge that I can never be close despite my longing to be at-home.

With each new birthday, I grow increasingly comfortable being this person; I have found people who I can love intensely and distantly, people who are comfortable being loved so and people who I can trust to be strong enough to be loved so.




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