There's something comforting in looking into someone's life and realizing that while the immediate motions are different, the overall pattern is the same. It reaffirms my faith in humanity—that at heart, most of us are pretty decent folk. We try to care about the people that are part of our lives. We've lost people that we cared about. New people move into our lives, and we learn to care about them too.

When I was younger, I didn't understand the concept of losing touch with people. I imagined myself and my life as a tree trunk, reaching out further and further every year. I marveled especially at my grandmother, because at that point in my life she seemed incredibly old and wise, and I wondered how she found room in her heart for all the people she had met and cared about throughout her entire life.I'm starting to get an idea. I look through my memories of my friends as I would look through the pages of a book. This is not a collection, it's a chronicle. People have dipped in and out of my life. Sometimes that's a good thing. Sometimes I regret this. There are some people that whose memory leaves a bittersweet imprint on my soul, because I wonder what I could have done to have kept them in my life. (Although, upon further thought, I know that people have separate lives, and things change.)

I sometimes miss the flaming red of the hair of my high school best friend. I wonder what Sperry's daughter looks like. It makes me look at my circle of friends now and appreciate them all the more, knowing that there might come a day when they, too, will be a chronicle, a memory.

Funny, the things we remember—the pale dancing blue of someone's eyes. A friend whose glasses are the same shape as your own, or that has a matching bumper sticker on her car. Or a multi-colored octopus tattoo.

I've never been much on quoting the Bible, mostly because I'm having trouble falling into a particular set of beliefs. (I'd make a smashing Buddhist, except for my carnivore urges.) But Jess has a quote on her page that I think sums it up:

I Cor. 15:41:
There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for one star differeth from another star in glory.

All different—kaleidoscopically so. But they all merit examination and contemplation, for they all have their place.