Leafing through an old diary, I stumbled upon a piece I wrote years ago – “Old Friends and Stories.” Reading it again, the words still flow and the imagery endures, though I’ve long forgotten what moved me to write it in the first place:

Old Friends and Stories

2012-12-11 02:39

There are, roughly, a few kinds of people in this world: those who write their own stories for others to read; those who read others’ stories and lose themselves in them; those who read others’ stories while writing their own; and perhaps those who invent stories of all kinds. Whatever the person, whatever the story – some stories are unremarkable, some tangled and complex, some have a clear beginning and end, while others never stop unfolding. Some people are remembered in stories, some forgotten, some seem never to have appeared at all, and some never quite fade away.

As we weave through crowds, or squeeze onto buses and subways going to and from work, we step into each other’s stories – intentionally or not. Some become main characters; others are merely passing figures. In the rise and fall of intertwined plotlines, our trajectories cross: some like exp and log, nearly brushing past each other only to diverge ever further; some like sin and cos, enduring a long wait for that moment at the turning point; and some like parallel lines, close enough to touch yet never meeting. Some people are treasured in the years gone by, because of an unforgettable past. Some flow between the lines, because of a hundred turns of hesitation. Some travel through different stories, searching for a new direction. And in some people’s stories, the same character keeps reappearing – waiting for something held close to the heart.

A chance meeting at a street corner, unprepared, and in that instant two people glimpse each other’s entire world. A split second of passing by – close enough to reach out and touch, yet no time for goodbye. And the far shore that can never be reached fills every moment with longing and devotion. Time lets us linger in each other’s stories – in a fleeting smile, in a few spare words, or in moonlit romance. Time lets us exist in each other’s stories – in intoxicating memories, in hazy eyes, or in the quiet stirring of the heart.

And time lets us understand the stories between us. Some stories are destined to be calm from the start, because neither person ever changed. Some stories seem turbulent yet hint at their ending all along, because neither would let go. And some stories never begin and never end, because both refuse to be tamed.