girlfriends and the space-time continuum

so a week ago we went out and watched the latest installment of plunder and dirty boys, pirates of the caribbean: dead man's chest. i loved the movie--it was a frolic, something fun and light and beautifully filmed. that and the boys are pretty easy on the eyes, if i do say so myself. YUM.

this weekend i got to see it again, and loved it just as much, and want next summer to be here NOW instead of...well, days away.

i keep thinking what a very long time that seems, one year. a turn around the sun, the earth has danced this dance for eons. to the rest of the universe it's probably a drop in the bucket, and moves by faster than i can blink in rain.

this weekend i got to see my girlfriends from the north, all former co-workers at the grocery store. all of us have since moved on into new positions, new places. time seems to stop when the four of us get together, and coalesce into a moment that stops and fudges on the record, just a blip.

it's not just distance that separates and joins people--i can drive anywhere and map out the mileage, and that does not change. it's still the same number of miles, if the crow flies or if i put tire to pavement, as it always has been. i feel blessed that i live in an age where it doesn't take more than a few hours to arrive up north and be welcomed into that group again, and make a new memory to sustain us on the miles between.

it's been two whole years since the summer of amanda's wedding--all the chaos and laughter on the canadian border, and the tears, too. impossible that time has moved so swiftly. stephen hawking postulates about black holes--the folding of time in on itself, to close the distance. sometimes i don't think that applies to space, insofar as space is usually considered as the conglomeration of stars and moons and galactic rickrack. i think that the black holes are more likely to occur between people--the closure of memory, sewn tight and broken and resewn.

when i get together with my friends, time no longer exists. the fact that we have been apart in distance that can be mapped and days that can be counted no longer matters--the distance is closed, the time removed, and we are all the same bodies that gathered once before, long ago.

how did it become us four people, a solid front, a net between? then again, how does the universe decide to create a star?

i can't remember when things gelled into place and simple became this way. i have other friends as dear, and other friends closer, siblings of blood and of heart, but these three are like their own small pocket of sanity for me.

one of my friends is in crisis now, has been for some time. the pocket that gathered around me in my time of need has gathered around her, in hers. i thought that perhaps it was something that could only contain one person at one time, that we were only strong enough to hold up one at a time as she stumbled. this weekend my reminder became that together we are far stronger, even with our own individual weaknesses, even if our weaknesses are all at the same time, than we are apart.

it is not only with this handful of women that i feel this net, reaching out in all directions. it is with everyone who has reached out a hand in my time of need, or to me in theirs. a great web extending over time and space. when i reach out my hand i write that theory of mr. hawkings', i prove that it is real.

there's no equation, nothing that is tangible, nothing that you can touch or see. can you prove love? is it just some chemicals, tossed together, or something more, something that can only be mapped by hands not yet born?