Dear Unforgotten friend,

How d¡¦you do?

How d¡¦you do?

And how d¡¦you do (again)?

I remember you.
Your cheeky little grin, your bullet speed train speech, you jester in a box. You were always popping up out of different hiding places, different nooks and crannies, and we were always chasing you, always trying to keep up with you, keep you in sight as you weaved in and out, in and out of the tall grasses, teasingly.

Your infectious laughter, the way your eyes would always crinkle up in delight whenever you heard something witty or vaguely funny. The way you could make a joke out of almost anything, tweaking the sounds, the sentence, or the words. For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn? With you, it seemed as if the world was alive, and you were burning it away with your insatiable curiosity, peeling it, layer by layer; the pages of a flaming book. I remember laughing uproariously at your latest satire, parody, discovery. Smiling as we traded banter and jabs like two knights jousting, two master chess players. Who¡¦s gonna win? Who¡¦s gonna win?

Our late night conversations; when your other side would appear. You were always seeking, always searching, always questing for that elusive trickle of water in your desert. But I think now, how much of that desert was really there and how much of it happened to be a cage of your own making? Like a lost traveller, and you sometime s made me your compass, your traveller¡¦s palm.

Those conversations invariably ended in discussion; discussion about our lost traveller. Where are you now? Can you not see the sun? can you not feel the rain? Look! There is an oasis, there, there! Can you see it?
Why can¡¦t you see it? Why couldn¡¦t you see it?

As your traveller¡¦s palm, I was always pointing in one direction only ¡V that direction, and final destination never changed. Maybe I wasn¡¦t convincing enough. Maybe you prefer the sun to the rain. Maybe. But as one of my friends said recently (in jest): if I don¡¦t perceive it, it¡¦s not there.

If I don¡¦t perceive it, it¡¦s not there.

Was that so for you? I wonder now if you did not simply ignore that compass ¡V and you had many. I know it, you know it. If only you had learnt to look.

You have found a new compass now, a slightly different type of palm tree, to lead you through the shifting sands, and the unceasing howl of wind in your lonely, lonesome desert. I hope it leads you well, and leads you right.

Is your other self still there? May I enquire? How should I knock? Do I ring the doorbell, rattle the letterbox, and pull the rope?

Those games we played. Do you still remember?
I hope you do. I hope you haven¡¦t forgotten. I hope there is more for you to go back to in that old life than an empty place.

If only you would learn to look.

Two paths diverged in a wood.
And I,
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.

And it has, hasn¡¦t it?

Yours,

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