I’m not always the brightest sandwich in the toolbox, but there’s something I’ve come to understand over the years — something that has intensified in the month or so that I’ve been writing these stories. (Has it been that long? Seems like yesterday and forever ago.)
The lesson is that there can be — and should be — value in every encounter, no matter how fleeting. Whatever came before, or after, for a moment two people came together and met a primal human need. That’s worth recognizing and remembering, even honoring.
In Japanese aesthetics, there’s a phrase — “wabi-sabi” that loosely translates to celebrating the beauty of the imperfect, incomplete and transient. It’s not that something is beautiful even though it is imperfect and doesn’t last — it’s beautiful because of those things, because life itself is imperfect and impermanent. I oversimplify from an outsider’s understanding, but I think I grasp the gist of it.
Early March, 2006: Warm for late winter, conditions which will come into play later in the tale. It was 1 a.m., everyone else in the house was asleep and I was just home from work and wide awake. So I hopped on Yahoo chat, figuring that I might at least find some stimulating conversation.