The air is still this Sunday evening, with fall’s briskness giving way to winter’s chills. I’ve ventured across the city, and maybe here in this old decrepit book store, I can find room to explore the past. 

Years have gone by and what were once vivid memories have faded into some vague story about things I once felt. Occasionally, these stories are decorated by flashes of affection— a smile here, a subtle curl of your lips there. As I wait for a middle-aged couple to finish packing their things, freeing a table, I wonder what if those trinkets of a past life would feel the same today.

There’s a particular nostalgia to this bookshop, hinting at poetry, sonnets, and letters written to friends, lovers, and the estranged.  But any semblance of authenticity has been commandeered and cheapened by the crowd of college-aged hipsters as if an argyle sweater could bring back “simpler” times.

As I sit down, one of them turns to me. “It’s sag season,” she says. That must explain everything— common threads, parallel lives, reconnecting with purpose. I’ll admit, I’m unsure if any of that lies in the week ahead for me. There are only so many times we can return to the past before realizing there’s nothing quite left to learn from it.

More than two years have passed since I last saw you. It’s a much longer time than it sounds, at least emotionally. I’ve grown since then. “The journey is long,” we told each other. We don’t have to get into the meaning of life.

The meaning of life, purpose, dharma, whatever you want to call it, is the only place we know how to go. Do our constant attempts to understand experience cheapen it? At some point, you realize there is nothing but experience. We probably learned this young. It will take a lifetime, however, to understand that simple, banal fact. 

This stranger has a peculiar resemblance to you. She’s younger, more naive, for sure, but visually similar. Her light brown hair is put up in a bun and she wears all black as you often would. It’s a resemblance to a past you. I can’t help but notice the difference in the way you speak these days. You have a harsher, more cynical tone. Seeing you is a search for magic, yet I get the sense that you, too, have lost sight of it. 

Yes, that must be it. Purpose, dharma, the meaning of life is simply magic. That must be the journey. I frown, wondering if I believe myself.

Her world is beginning to open with magic. There’s wonder in her eyes as she tells me, “I’m meeting him for the first time next week. We’ve been pen pals for the past seven years.”

When we experienced magic for the first time, we didn’t quite see it coming. It was a sensation that grew just outside the grasp of perception. Until, one day, we found the gates to a garden, blossoming. It’s been a while since we have tended to it. I’m afraid there will be nothing left now but undergrowth.

She too will be careless with the keys— we all are. The tragedy is our hurried attempts at manufacturing that space when this first encounter passes. The steps are deceivingly simple: find a plot of land, preferably gated. Change the locks. Cut through the weeds. Turn the soil. Fertilize. Plant the seeds. Provide adequate sun and water.

Yet, something would always be missing. I have yet to learn patience. Crushing seedlings with the weight of my step as I anxiously check on them.

These days, I’ve reduced the feeling into one-liners that can convince others of the depth that I once felt. Though in reciting them, I’m starting to fear they have lost all meaning.

“All the magic in the world can be found in the space in between two people,” I tell her. 

She’s convinced and it gives me hope. We take sips from our drinks, settle into our chairs and begin to write about our weeks ahead. I believe you must be doing the same.