Findra was one of my oldest online friends; we met digitally, I suppose, somewhere around early 1996 when my circle of friends I might spend all evening communicating with in ASCII grew most rapidly. She was also one of the first online friends I ever saw in person; in fact, she might be the first. I had flown in to Louisville, Kentucky, to meet another person, and Findra was with him, and as I strode toward what I imagined our meeting point to be I did walk right past them, and she thought she saw me and tried catching my eye but my usual sort of muddling caught up delayed our meeting a couple of minutes.
I didn't see her often in person; we were just too far apart and I travel remarkably little considering how much I like it. But kept talking online, and that can be satisfying, especially when you don't just talk but communicate.
Several weeks ago I realized that she and I had not actually communicated in a while. I'm happy to say that I acted on the feeling, and we talked. It wasn't anything deep, more our mutual recognition that we'd let one another drift apart and we both regretted this, and we got a bit closer together again. It was small, but life is lived in the small.
I am sorry that I let us drift apart at all. I'm glad we took some steps closer together. I'm sorry there aren't more.
To each of you, thank you for being in my life. Don't underestimate the importance of that. Each day of it is one of those small pieces we so need.
Trivia: On 15 October 1783 Jean François Pilâtre de Rozier, a popular lecturer on physics and chemistry, became the first man known to rise in a balloon, riding the Montgolfier brothers' tethered balloon to about fifty feet. Source: Taking Flight: Inventing The Aerial Age From Antiquity Through The First World War, Richard P Hallion.
Currently Reading: The Great SF Stories 23: 1961, Editors Isaac Asimov, Martin H Greenberg.
