I prefer the old pond to this new one. Few people were ever seen around the old one, and the wooded stretch was more woody. The old trail was a bed of dirt and roots and leaves, and the new one is concrete. But I shouldn’t complain. It’s still a nice walk. Much less character along the way, but nice. Cookie-cutter.

…… … . . . . . .. … .. .

I feel like my life is in its homestretch. There aren’t anymore surprises, just a couple of plans to play out. It’s not that I don’t like the prospects, because I do. I’m just sad that I know what they are and that there are so few of them left.

I say that like I’m a hundred years old.

I might as well be.

The older you get, the more each day is the same as the one before and the faster they all fly by. Before you know it, you’re fifty, your dad is ninety, and everything feels, well, over.

I miss my friend.

… . .. .. . .

She moved to Jakarta about six months ago. A couple of days ago, she moved into a high-rise apartment and now lives on the thirtieth floor overlooking a bustling city. She is a light in the world, now thirty floors up where everyone can see her. I should text her. Evening has arrived on my side of the globe, and her day is just getting started.

She and I made a paper rollercoaster once with a pulley system. It was genius.

We also skydived and made excessively large cakes.

We were an hour away from each other during the lockdown, so we made videos for each other. One of hers was a tutorial on how to juggle. She did not know how to juggle, so it was more of a how-not-to. She was juggling by the end of the video. I made a Claymation video out of playdough, and I used a catapult that I constructed out of a shoebox and a plastic salad spoon to launch a variety of objects across the living room. I didn’t use clay to animate any part of the catapult video, but I did launch the playdough. I used the slow motion setting and drew over the video the parabolic trajectories and all the math stuff involved. We were teaching youngsters from afar, so I made sure they benefited academically from my attempts to keep myself and my friend entertained. We still make random videos for each other, especially now that we are in opposite time zones.

We had plans to build a massive pendulum filled with paint so that we could make a painting. That never happened.

We were ridiculous, and I miss her. I feel like I’ve aged since she left.

.