1 giant burrito
2 big box retailers
3 hours of wedding plans
2 big box retailers
3 hours of wedding plans
but this is beside the point.
the point is that i met my sister three years ago yesterday, on a dark and rainy Friday night, in the courtyard of a coffee shop populated by thieves and charlatans. why my sister was there i may never know, and my own reasons for being there are even murkier, but i suppose it doesn't matter. if i've learned anything in this current lifetime, it's that the chain of cause and effect is sturdy but uncertain, and that karmas have their own way of linking one person to the next.
the link connecting me to my sister was Saylor, and as he presented me to her, i wondered how many cigarettes one woman could smoke during the length of an introduction. my sister has a prodigious capacity for nicotine, caffeine, and (probably) Ovaltine, but what really caught my attention was the way she spoke:
we quickly settled into a routine of pizza, sand, and crises. we saw Cat Power, we danced in Miami, we alternately lamented and celebrated the ambiguous genetics of metaphysical siblingry.
we ate brownies, we drank tonic water, we stared at half empty (always half empty) glasses of wine on fence posts as the summer rains fell in late September. she introduced me to an auto-nomen with a mild case of synesthesia, and told me about the heartbreak of her DJ-ed lovers.
the point is that i met my sister three years ago yesterday, on a dark and rainy Friday night, in the courtyard of a coffee shop populated by thieves and charlatans. why my sister was there i may never know, and my own reasons for being there are even murkier, but i suppose it doesn't matter. if i've learned anything in this current lifetime, it's that the chain of cause and effect is sturdy but uncertain, and that karmas have their own way of linking one person to the next.
the link connecting me to my sister was Saylor, and as he presented me to her, i wondered how many cigarettes one woman could smoke during the length of an introduction. my sister has a prodigious capacity for nicotine, caffeine, and (probably) Ovaltine, but what really caught my attention was the way she spoke:
half-goof
half-laugh
all genius.
she said things like
and,
after a brief flirtation with incest,
we quickly settled into a routine of pizza, sand, and crises. we saw Cat Power, we danced in Miami, we alternately lamented and celebrated the ambiguous genetics of metaphysical siblingry.
we ate brownies, we drank tonic water, we stared at half empty (always half empty) glasses of wine on fence posts as the summer rains fell in late September. she introduced me to an auto-nomen with a mild case of synesthesia, and told me about the heartbreak of her DJ-ed lovers.
we did all of these things; we did none of these things.
she left two years ago, this Sunday, on Train 52 from somewhere in central Florida, and this morning was the first time i ever realized that we only knew each other a year. it seemed so much more than that, and i wonder:
why do we insist on this arbitrary measures of meaning? why all these anniversaries and remembrances and fracturing of our lives into months and weeks and years and minutes of the day? why this particular persistence of memory rather than another?
why do we insist on this arbitrary measures of meaning? why all these anniversaries and remembrances and fracturing of our lives into months and weeks and years and minutes of the day? why this particular persistence of memory rather than another?
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