Thoughts on...

FRIENDSHIPS:

• There are friendships that fade in and out of our lives like a magician's hand holding something tangible that turns to smoke at the flick of the wrist. Have we been fooled, perhaps. Did we enjoy the trick; immensely.

• When we are young and invincible, we are like birds on a wire, sharing brief moments of joy and sadness with our friends before taking flight for places yet unseen. And so life goes; the focus of today's attention will tomorrow reside in the shadows of our mind like an incomplete jigsaw puzzle. As we grow older and the acceptance of our mortality hangs about us like an ill-fitting overcoat, we realize that the impressions left by the people who have passed through our lives are not transitory at all, but stitch themselves together to create the cloth that defines us. We are always richer for the joy of friendships past, for in those brief bouts of bonding we discover what is real and what is simply shadow.