(Dis) Connection

Feeling a bittersweet pull tonight, a sort of loneliness. I think it's because I went down to the basement to look for a baby picture Sam needed for a school project. While downstairs, I came across an old photo album. In it was a snapshot of a friend I took when we were both nineteen. He's sitting on the ground behind my house in the mountains holding my nephew, Aaron, on his knee. Aaron was three at the time; now he's twenty-five. I can't believe it was that long ago: a lifetime ago. My friend's handsome, tanned face was so youthful, not quite yet a man's. His light brown hair was silky--like a baby's--and slightly disheveled. And his eyes were bright and clear as the mountain sky.

"Defined elementally, eros is the desire for connection," writes James Hollis in The Eden Project: In Search of the Magical Other.

I guess my feelings tonight are erotic--but in the elemental (Platonic) sense, not the sexual. My friend and I are still in touch; we reestablished contact almost four years ago. In fact, we're much closer now than we were at age nineteen. Which, I'm sure, is why I feel this tug of sadness. We haven't talked in a while, and I miss him. Miss the companionship, the connection. The mysterious, substratal connection only we older versions of those sun-kissed college kids could possibly understand--or endure.

"Once again," sings the ancient poet Sappho, "limb-loosening Eros shakes me, a helpless crawling thing, sweet-bitter."