good morning, darling friend.
have you peeked around the blinds just yet, opened the windows? I’m sending these blue skies to you.
I saw a post a while back mentioning how an unseen consequence of the pandemic (despite all of the many vivid ones) is the loss of those impermanent friendships—that turning point between strangers and friends, or familiar faces we were just starting to get to know. a favorite barista who maybe found new work when the coffee shop closed. an older man that shared your bus commute and always got off a stop before you—each day, a different hand-knit scarf tucked around his neck.
but things have changed again, this tap dance in and out of the home. maybe you’ve moved, too. started dating or enrolled in a class for school. maybe there’s a new job, or one from home, and you’re in a place to pay attention: watching the schnauzer across the street take its last stroll of the evening, or you can tell from video meetings that one co-worker’s home is smattered with leafy plants of all varieties. and it’s not as lonely as it used to be (though maybe this is a new kind) with time to slow down and deepen roots with friends who never left, or spark chats with new people oceans away. we are all so clumsy in our conversation, it seems less scary to know we share this unpracticed field. our laughs come out a little crooked. we baby-step through topics. and I’m finding when I do go out, it means a lot more. I take in everything; birds only about as big as my thumb carrying bundles of dried grass between their beaks, the consistent train schedule a block over. I fold the little passing conversations into my pockets and carry them home. one cashier at the grocery store always styles her hair in high double buns and it makes my day. even when I work from a mostly-empty office, there’s Ronnie, who watches me grab a second coffee and warns, with his sixty-year-old wisdom, “did I ever tell you my experience with cold brew?” (it begins with him downing a 16 oz. glass and ends with him dancing around a stop sign, a la Singing in the Rain.)
for now, I’m satisfied to observe it, this energy exchange—how your group of friends and these transient acquaintances morph and change shape, gaining and subtracting, breathing like its own entity. and here we are in the middle of it, still keeping touch. I’ll stay writing these letters, wishing you well.
with love,
schuyler (sky-ler)
venmo: schuylerpeck