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I wonder, it’s frightening… leaving now, is that the right thing?

Sure thing I am not the only one to ponder on the phenomenon of friendship: I can but join Bacon affirming that “if a man have not a friend, he may quit the stage”; indeed, friendship is like a noble wine: losing track of someone is like caching bottles: the elder the liquid the more astringent its taste. But to rediscover someone you knew is much more stunning than discovering America.

I am greeting you now, dear, from those distant days, irrevocably vanished in the past; still the voice keeps beckoning on and on, resounding in my ears as if it were the very night when you were saying your last “adieu” near the Westhampton Lake… I still remember the neon lights streaming from the stylized lanterns; I still hear the attenuated rustle of the leaves… This light and this rustling, stretched behind our footprints, were restarting the new chronicles of our lives: years and years of separation rushing away with the speed of light…

But even now some of my true and beloved ones go away, not even turning their heads… and nothing would remain than to jump into the James River without ever reappearing on the surface, if Fatum were not more indulgent than we fear: as sort of a compensation, one by one, those whom I had lost are now stepping from the shadow of oblivion.

I am still hoping that the past days and the past youthful contradictions and incomprehension are gone for good, and that if they do discover my humble scriptures, they will consent that there is nothing more precious than our acquaintance of so long a standing, that there is nothing but keeping together in a world where it is, in spite of all, so easy to get lost, that they will linger on and… show up in my life again, resending the link to our common ancient friends, thus generously helping get all my semi-forgotten dears back.

15 January 2008. — Dzerzhinsk (Russia)