and then our exile

a globbing-roll today.

i have spent much and much of my time consoling a very emotional little sister, and froze outside [i am not meant to be worked outside when it is five degrees. Am led to wonder how it is possible to feel numb and tingly at once?], and other time expounding with Ammi on the virtues of letter-writing while we dried dishes, creating beautiful metaphors.

I've been thinking of a phenomenon for two days now, on and off, and have come to the conclusion that it is ajeeb. What connects two people, out of all the world? I find I know a gigantuarn number of people on a superficial basis, people i can greet on the street and perhaps have a two-word conversation with, but with whom I have no...desire(?) to go further? Or possibly even more than two words--perhaps even talk of the weather. But then, on the other hand, individuals not numbering more than ..ten, or so, with whom I can interact for hours upon hours. And then, within these, there are those who seem to live parallel lives to some extent--reading the same books, singing the same songs, having the same plans for future. These aren't .. coincidence, surely, as I've met a number of them [with some it's more extreme than others], but what is the force that makes us connect? That pulls us off the street and says : know one another! Or maybe it's not the street--possibly an HSMUN, possibly a felafal shop in Granada, possibly the bus going to Samarqand. A complete answer is supplied for theists, for sure, but this only raises further questions...
Ammiji says that in her "days of naivity" she considered every stranger a potential friend, but has since learned more about life. Certainly there is a level on which all people [we are human beings, after all] are able to interact, but I wouldn't go so far as to call all 'potential friends'--too many divisive medians. Once when I biked into Sherwood Park, I walked along the boulevard on Wye. You know the one. On the boulevard, rather. And all the cars were whistling by--all those people, all these people, everyone I am hearing and seeing and even feeling in the crowd around me--each has his or her own life. As in, all to him or herself. [now i cut the lingual feminist exigencies]. and they all have goals, too, and plans. and houses to live in. and places to go. For some reason, that just strikes me as ... beautifully-terrifying. Alone in a crowd of 6billion people. Which brings me back to the individuals I love. [my lecture on love--I use the word freed from its bondage to physicalities, releasing it to the wider sphere of sincere appreciation as well.] Somewhere in some south american jungle, far from the CCC [carsconcretecapitalists] of the West, there is an individual I will connect with some day.
i proceed in anticipation of that.