Never ignore coincidence... unless you're busy

I'd had plans to go out, but they fell through. As I mulled over whether or not to go and see other friends at the usual haunt, I had a melancholy Massive Attack song in my head. Eventually, the decision came to go ahead and pop out for a bit. When I arrived, C & M were there, whom I never get to see after they had a baby. Bonus points for the evening, achieved. A few minutes later, either deja or precia vu set in, as the very same Massive Attack song played over the stereo system. When a coincidence like that happens, I figure that I'm where I need to be, when I need to be there, and something important will come of it. All that figuring led me to mulling, and the mulling led me to considering someone I've been giving much consideration of late. She's a certain special someone whom I hope holds me in the same regard, but she's also been going through a bit of a rough patch. Obviously (if you are in my braincase) this made good ole Rainer Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet stroll through my synapses.

"Learning time is always a long, secluded time, and therefore loving, for a long time ahead and far into life, is solitude - a heightened and deepened kind of aloneness for the person who loves. Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person - for what would a union of two people who are unclarified, unfinished, and still incoherent? It is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become the world in themselves for the sake of another person; it is a great, demanding claim, perhaps that for which human lives are barely yet large enough."

  

 That pretty much sums it up. I have a platinum card carrying crush,
but as much as I'd like to move to the next level of metaphor, we're both still ripening, and there's little else worse than an unripe peanut.

Remember These 27 Names, and Forget the One

Charlotte Bacon (2/22/06), 6 years old, female
Daniel Barden (9/25/05), 7 years old, male
Rachel Davino (7/17/83), Staff member, 29 years old, female
Olivia Engel (7/18/06), 6 years old, female
Josephine Gay (12/11/05), 7 years old, female
Ana M. Marquez-Greene (4/4/06), 6 years old, female
Dylan Hockley (3/8/06), 6 years old, male
Dawn Hochsprung (6/28/65), Principal, 47 years old, female
Madeleine F. Hsu (7/10/06), 6 years old, female
Catherine V. Hubbard (6/8/06), 6 years old, female
Chase Kowalski (10/31/05), 7 years old, male
Nancy Lanza, 52 years old, female (mother of shooter Adam Lanza)
Jesse Lewis (6/30/06), 6 years old, male
James Mattioli (03/22/06), 6 years old, male
Grace McDonnell (11/4/05), 7 years old, female
Anne Marie Murphy (7/25/60), Staff member, 52 years old, female
Emilie Parker (05/12/06), 6 years old, female
Jack Pinto (05/05/06), 6 years old, male
Noah Pozner (11/20/06), 6 years old, male
Caroline Previdi (9/07/06), 6 years old, female
Jessica Rekos (5/10/06), 6 years old, female
Avielle Richman (11/17/06) 6 years old, female
Lauren Rousseau (June 1982), Staff member, 30 years old, female
Mary Sherlach (2/11/56), Staff member, 56 years old, female
Victoria Soto (11/04/85), Staff member, 27 years old, female
Benjamin Wheeler (09/12/06), 6 years old, male
Allison N. Wyatt (07/03/06), 6 years old, female