Sometimes parts of us hide away waiting for years to come back to the surface. Maybe they come back knocking on our door in the words of a friend who remembers what we said in times forgotten to us, maybe pouring over diaries found dusty in the attic, and other times cleaning out old phones and listening to audio files. I honestly do not remember writing this or reading it out loud. I’m guessing I did it for my friend who doesn’t like to read. I know that I did it, and not someone else, because the words hold some ‘signature’ ideas that I know came creeping out from my cauliflower brain. Listening though, even though I could ‘hear myself’ I still wondered if it were not another person with similar ideas. It was so nicely executed.
Once I was in Boulder, CO, where I had been staying with a lover for 3 months. I returned to visit him 5 years later and we went to ‘our’ contact improvisation community. There was a man there who I danced with and easily fell into an easy grace with. After the rather wonderful day, we lay, chatting softly, intimately, and he said, ‘You remind me of another English woman I met. She was like you…’ I instantly felt insecure, inferior, I felt that when he finds out who I am I will never ever compare. But, strangely, as he described her, I started to feel familiar, until he said, ‘I photographed her.’ I looked up and out, saw his face and whispered, ‘Hang on, that WAS me!’
Strange, beautiful, eerie to meet one self through magic tunnels of time.
