Not with a bang but a giggle

I don't imagine the world is going to end today. Though I saw it in all the papers. You can't believe everything you read, I suppose. Tempting as it may be. The believing I mean. Daddy and I used to shout over Niagara Falls from above, watching that changing, constant scape of frightening volumes of water falling over the edge, our glasses dotted with spray, our voices a whisper over the water's furor, a heady, tempting pull to be two of the water droplets, joining the many in the heady, headless adventure. To be pulled in. Bernouilli's principle pulls you in. The herd instinct. The sound of two hands clapping. Your own two hands in a vast concerthall audience, though you didn't cortically will the clapping. Your hands resonated with the crowd's rhythm, and clapped without you. No, I don't imagine the world will end on May 21, even if enough people believe it. But they say we should live our life as if this day is the last, and also live our life as if this day is the first. Look in awe and wonder at sun over waves (I do! I do! Arriving at the sea's edge is everyday a first, an awe, an awakening for these surprised eyes). That sun disappears, that darkness comes, actually surprises me, each time we stay down at the beach too long, jump the nighttime waves by ear, and fall, our ear confused by the complexity of waverhythms in the roaring black darkness. Let me live each moment as if it's the first. And savour each precious day as if, as if, as if this dear, tumultuous, beautiful physical world of ours is just one of those tiny droplets of Niagara's River, ready for the escarpment of a lifetime.

To Jayda on May 14

That she would travel all the way to Victoria just for my 50th birthday party, do my toes and my fingernails and dress in minis with me, photographing the whole thing at angles that made us look good..... That's a friend.
That she would travel all the way to Netanya when she detected a small note of sadness amongst all my happy words.....That's a true friend. (How we dance the waves, wear each other's dresses and each love it when the other looks even better than she does in this or that outfit. How we match at times, contrast at others, always bringing out the best in each other.)
That the very friend who arranges nature so that every photo is picture perfect and happy, would be the one who sees all the facets of me, reads me between the lines, knows when my smile is mixed, my happiness complicated, my questions unformed and unaskable. And that she would ask the sensible questions that untangle my tangles, dance me towards clarity.....That's a soulfriend.
Happy Birthday Jayda. You are so very beautiful. Love Nomi