This morning I am thinking about two people I spoke to at the Village Voice reunion last September. I was surprised to see them, and I slipped into my old patterns with them, and the patterns were pleasurable. Both people, one a man, the other a woman, had been important to me. I could say they shaped my life in certain ways. The relationships had ended. The relationships were not alive when I ran into these people, who are not connected to each other. There they were, and there I was, the old me, the me in readiness, and I loved the feeling of this readiness and this self that is sleeping and can come awake without preparation or expectation. I had not thought about either person in advance. Maybe a fleeting thought about the woman, not the man. The woman was bored and casting around to interrupt the boredom. The man and I bumped into each other over a bowl of pita wedges. We did not eat. Maybe he ate. We moved off to a corner, and he talked. I listened. In both conversations there were moments of Why did you say that? or I didn’t understand why you did that . . . I thought you were angry, etc. In neither case were things resolved. There was not an idea of resumption. I came away feeling happy and sad. It was like wandering in the “Garden of Earthly Delights” or in a dream of your past or in your life as a Dickens ghost. What remains is the sense of who you love, not why, not is it fair, not is it equal. Just love you feel no matter what. It has given me my life.