Duality

The eternal dynamic. From Adam and Eve to the present, it's still the dominant pattern of human interaction: boys and girls together yet somehow apart. Getting together with old schoolmates- those people you still know but don't interact with on a regular basis- and the old back-and-forth begins anew. A bluff, a challenge, light hearted arguments made with twinkling eyes. It is as if you had only stepped out of the room for a minute- rather than the ten or twenty or forty years it had been since you last spoke to each other.

And so the facade goes up: the hiding of what you don't want the other to know, but what they do know, and what you know they know and what they know you know they know. After all of the stings and disappointments in a lifetime spent in toil and drudgery these people will always remain your foundation. They are the ones who defined your sense of self, the ones who kindled your first spark of passion, the ones whose faults have been washed away in the rains of time.

You greet each other and talk but the crucial words remain unsaid. The words that you want to share. The words which you couldn't say then. The words you won't say now.

Then there is that moment you share in a dark corner with an old crush. Your face is close to hers, you shut your eyes and and then you kiss. Suddenly, for that moment, you are both seventeen again- her kiss is the same, you are surprised at how the memory returns in an instant. When you finally do open your eyes you are once more both sixty-one but she is smiling and then she says, "I love you" and you say "I love you" and the words which couldn't be spoken are said at last and you both know that the bond which you share will never be broken.