Thread by @OnKBHR

Good morning, Cicely!
A little local news to start off this fine October morning: Ruth Anne accidentally ordered too many avocados this month, so is running a sale: 75% off! The Brick is celebrating with a Guacamole Celebration and 2 for 1 margaritas. (Thread). #northernexposure

In other news, Eve thanks everyone for all the well wishes she received after announcing her self-diagnosis of Q fever last week. Layla, the goat suspected of possessing the transmissible Coxiella burnetii infection, is in quarantine & she & Eve are on doxycycline...again.

I need to apologize for being gone last week and want to thank Maurice for filling in for me. I know everyone loved that Rodgers and Hammerstein marathon. I’ll certainly be humming ‘Oklahoma’ for weeks to come...

The reason I was gone was because I went to visit a childhood friend and meet his family for the first time in the lower 48. I’ve not seen him for years and when the opportunity presented itself, I jumped at the opportunity.

He & his husband run one of the greatest independent book stores I’ve ever seen. When I arrived, I was struck by how it felt nothing had changed between my friend & me. Sure, we are both a lot grayer, and one of us is a dad...but the familiarity, the connection was all there...

What is it with old friends? How can two people be separated by decades of time and fall back into an effortless rhythm? Is the answer more scientific, that our brains simply developed together during those formative years of youth when everything is new and exciting?

Or is there some enduring connection that is formed which lingers in our hearts from childhood, which can be resuscitated like the smell of the ocean in a old shirt worn by the seaside noticed months later upon retrieval from a closet?

I don’t know. But my emotions ran the full spectrum on my trip: from unmitigated joy in seeing his happiness and beautiful family to sadness that I don’t get to see them every day, and in fact, won’t likely see them again for a long time.

C.S. Lewis wrote, “Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival." As I stood in their bookstore which my friend & his husband created from love, art & friendship...I felt alive...

...and was reminded of Proust, “... the smell & taste of things remain poised a long, long time like souls, ready to remind us, waiting, hoping for their moment...& bear unfaltering in the tiny, almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.”

I now have a new memory of an old friend...one enriched by his own life experiences & successes, by his amazing husband and daughter, by a community that loves and supports them, and by a home and store built with art and beauty.....

Spinning this one for you, S and D...thank you for an amazing visit.

Gregory Alan Isakov - Time Will Tell via @YouTube