Freeform wonderings

Sometimes I meet someone and I think “I wish I was going to get the chance to know you”. There are people out there – cool people, funny people, talented people, beautiful people – they’re like a great idea just before you fall asleep or a postcard from a stranger delivered to you accidentally. They provide a moment of exhilaration or inspiration that you know you won’t hold on to, that will never be part of your life. A stolen experience from someone else’s diary, a perfect view from a speeding train that aligns momentarily- window frame, angle, perspective, light, something caught in the amber of memory that existed for you for that second but can never be recreated. You know that kind of meeting? A half smile across a crowded tube train from the cute girl with the pierced nose. An overheard joke told with precision and perfect comedy timing. A poem filled with clarity and deeply felt. I’ve met artists who I’d love to chat to for hours, writers who don’t know that I’m even worth speaking to, friends of a friend who pass the time of day, plant seeds of potential and vanish. I now realise -- too late, too late -- you can’t know everyone, feel everything, mean something to every single somebody. You have to pick your life like a bouquet, one flower, one experience, one friend at a time – surround yourself with colour and diversity and remember to celebrate the people you do have the privilege to know well, the places that feel safe and familiar, the experiences and instances that unfolded around you and you alone. And when another exotic life drifts past your eyes, a wind swept blossom of exquisite, unknowable beauty, don’t give chase or crane your neck to see where it falls, know that you are also something special, fluttering on the periphery of someone else’s world and that someone somewhere is yearning to know you too.