Happy birthday!

To glinda_north:




glinda_north, The other day I looked over your list of interests - something I'd never actually done before, maybe taking it for granted that we had many in common, which I already knew. And so we do: way too many - Arthur, Lord of the Rings, Lymond, Gaiman, Pre-Raphaelites, peace, Johnny Depp, and so on... Only two or three on your list are not also interests of mine. No wonder I find you so interesting. No wonder I value your friendship.

So: Have a wonderful day, a wonderful year, a wonderful life - and maybe, if luck is with me, I'll see you sometime this year!

Dreams, memories and the subconscious....

Today I started reading a book that begins:

Death is outside life but it alters it: it leaves a hole in the fabric of things which those who are left behind try to repair.

This seemed to fit eerily with the dream I had last night. ( The book... )

I dreamed about my friend Tovah. Some of you here knew her. I dreamed I was visiting Tovah in New York, which I used to do sometimes, and she was still alive, which pleased and surprised me, because even while talking to her in the dream I was aware that I had thought her dead. She wasn't well; there were medicines about, which alarmed me, but gave me hope that she'd be getting better soon. We were having a great conversation. We always did.

I left her apartment, and then realized when I got to the street that I'd forgotten something at her place. I turned to go back, but couldn't remember her apartment number, or find the right corridor to get there, or even be sure I was going into the right building. The more I tried to remember the way, to find her place again, the more she was gone.... And then I woke up, thinking: Why that dream? Why now?

It must be just about ten years since Tovah died. For some reason I have trouble remembering the exact dates when people who were important to me died. A sort of mental block. My mother died in mid-November 1982, I think; Frank in March, 1983; Tovah in... surely... late April, 1994. We'd been travelling in England together after the 1994 Dunnett gathering, and had a great time. I was planning to visit her in May. Somewhere between those dates, she died. I may not have been thinking about it, but obviously my subsconscious was aware.

I like the metaphor: that death is, literally, losing someone - losing track of their whereabouts - but they're still there, where you can't find them.

It ought to be comforting. It is, but... I find myself feeling lonely this evening, for no particular reason. Not sad, exactly, but melancholy. I have wonderful friends, most of them still alive. (Thank goodness for you!) But people are so fragile, so easy to lose and not find again. Like budgies, really.

Ten years, and I miss Tovah very much.