In the Fall of 2018, I got a surprise email from Leo with whom I went school together in the late 1960s in Vienna, Austria. He was the boyfriend of my roommate, Kuni. We were preparing ourselves for the University of Vienna. Last time I saw him was in February, 1970 before Steve and I left Vienna for Hawaii.
Leo, a retired psychiatrist, has three sons, one daughter and four grandchildren. He lives in Stockholm with his wife, and visits his brother in Greece a few times a year. He also said that his daughter helped him to locate me via my blog site. He wrote, “I’m trying to adjust to life being retired, and I do feel a bit of relief not listening to troubles all day – 40 years of doing so is enough.”
Nearly fifty years, half a century, is a span of time to find the lost friend! When I waved bye to friends in Vienna, it was beyond my imagination how half a century would roll onto my shore.
Nothing seemed impossible then, young and reckless, we ran with and against the wind. The distance and time were flexibly measured in kilometers and seconds, hours, days and years devoid of emotional footprints then.
Now our footprints aren’t as flexible as once believed to be, as the lava beneath our feet has cooled and become sedentary. I flip through tattered, discolored silent photographs. How time and distance distort reality! They speak different languages from different coordinates.
Meantime the time has changed its face as the entropy hands out decay into my joints and eye sights. The fecundity of decay of time brought us children, grandchildren and internet. Finding an old friend is like going back home; back to the time when we were…
yenna yi 