The Cosmos

It's been a supernatural weekend. A beautiful girl named Miriam was killed in a hit-and-run in front of Hopkins. She wasn't a close friend of mine but she was close with some of my best friends, and we talked about Chicago every now and again (she went to Nutrier High School). In an effort to escape midterms and this news, a little group of us went to Aventino and saw Chiesa di Sant'Alessio and il giardino degli aranci. It was a gray afternoon but we sat in the orange grove, on a stone ledge, looking over the city. From an unknown window, we heard a choir singing "bridge over troubled water." It was a surreal moment-a rare coincidence of interior and exterior corolating. Later, in the warmth of our apartment, I checked my email and my breath caught in my throat. A guy that I once had a writing class with informed me that he had been in a motorcycle accident and lost all of his memory. One day he was in the supermarket and he saw a girl who looked like me. He thought and he thought and finally, he recalled my name! Miraculous! After this, he was rehabilitated. He could remember again. I sat with a puzzled expression: what did this mean? was he thanking me? asking for some validation? just excited? And then I stopped analyzing and simply felt happy. I helped someone. And he went out of his way to let me know that in this bizarre, tempestuous, sometimes cruel, cosmos, we were linked. I mention all of this because it's so easy to get bogged down in the day-to-day. The worries, stresses, inconveniences of life, whatever they may be. But we're only here once! And we're all connected! I'm across the pond but I want my loved ones to know how much I really appreciate them. Tomorrow is uncertain. Now is the time to put everything, every last word, in writing and into the universe.