Reunion

Reconnection with what is familiar. Like deja vu, only not the strangeness of the unexpected familiarity of a memory that doesn't exist. Rather reconnecting to memories evoked by what has accompanied one through years of living. Scratched perhaps, a little tacky, needing refinishing, but redolent with the past.

As I unpack, my past unfolds before me like one of those cut-out stand-up books of children's illustrations. From each page something springs forth that's newly found. It might be as simple as my Tibetan-patterned duvet or as complex as a filing cabinet of old journals.

The distant rocking of the subway coming into the station in the earth below is like a dim thunder traveling through the soil into my bones. It's simultaneously a rocking, comforting sound and electric. If I am sleepwalking through the days it's because I'm mesmerized by the dream that life is.

It's not just unpacking my household but a voice from the past that's shaken me from the insomnabulism of settling into sameness. I'm re-entering who I am as a different person.

Writing is like scrying, perceiving the deeper truths. I could throw alphabets like yarrow stalks into the air and see how they land, or toss Tarot cards with their symbolism over the bed, or my Chinese coins with their holes in the centre six times and read the prognosis of the I Ching, or hold my blue lapis lazuli pendulum with its fine gold veins by its silver chain and see which way it swings when I ask the secret questions.

We have fiction because life would be far too strange without fabrication.

I survey my boxes of books and clothes and furniture and writing and paintings and am stunned that I still have everything.

How does what we thought was lost become found?



Is reunion a reciprocity that is inherent in existence? Not just breaking apart, the entropy, but 'coming together' itself as a process. When what is familiar returns to its original relation. Or is it that I cannot lose what's mine? I am surrounded by what I have collected. And with this collection comes an identity that I was shorn of when I had nothing.

It's miraculous, yes, but also about reception and acceptance.

We know time and space bend. Was it always curving so that while we thought we were traveling apart we were actually flying towards each other?

I don't mean to speak in riddles, but with reconnections and reunions on different levels I am reverberating in the strangeness of familiarity.

What was past becomes future. Time and space nestle within their own mysteries. I find my past opening like Chinese boxes as I magically find the trail that led to here.

Memory becomes living heritage and I feel I am bequeathed such gifts by a younger self. How to fathom the depth of the love of this deeper reunion?