Thimble-fulls of neutrons

Today is a perfect day. I had a good long bike ride, a good long walk, and even a good long swim. Well... maybe it was more like a short swim and a long float. This is a pic of my Dad and I talking about Outer Space. My Dad is a physics & space nut. Nothing makes him more happy than to be asked questions related to those topics. So I thought I'd make him happy and asked him about gravity and why the moon doesn't fall down, etc. (I seriously can never retain stuff like that.) So we talked about how you could hook up a Great Glass Elevator if you just had a 25,000 mile-long cable, and pull yourself up to the space station. I learned that a thimble-full of matter from a neutron-star can weigh more than a mountain. Wow! I also learned that the moon is falling down. Really slowly.

Anyhow, I certainly got my exercise today. My legs are feeling we-eak. I won't get my strength back by next week, that's for sure. Which means that when my Montreal darlin' comes to visit, she will kick my butt going up the mountain.

I haven't really talked about S yet. I used to call her my best friend, but I'm not a big fan of that term. Cause if you can have a best friend, then you can also have a worst friend, which is stupid. Instead, I call her my bosom friend, because I can tell her anything at all that's in my heart or on my chest. That's what Anne of Green Gables called Diana. You can scoff, if you want, but that was a bloody fantastic book. And they were fantastic friends.

So, S is about to start her second year in Montreal, where she's working on a Doctorate. She studies post-colonial immigrants in France and cultural tensions and racism and art and whatnot. I have her Master's thesis here, and I admit I've not yet really dived in. It's daunting, you know. She's a brilliant girl, and I want to do the thing justice and be able to discuss it with her. I don't know how she ever became an almost-30, almost-Doctor. She doesn't look much different from when I first knew her in high school. Just stronger, more self-possessed, more beautifully blazing. She has her own heavy battles, but pushes through it all with such spirit. Becoming a master ass-kicker with Taekwondo, delving deep into therapy, conquering the world of Academia, stoking up all her fires - truly inspiring.

S and I got piercings together in Grade 11 (she: eyebrow, me: nose) and we did ridiculous things all the time. We smoked huge cigars once and made ourselves really ill. We also made ourselves really ill with other things, and skipped class together to lie in this lovely field on an Indian Reserve on sunny days. (Until we were discovered and got kicked off.) We both played the piano very seriously. We both lived in the same suburb but went to a school far away. We both felt like pariahs, ostracized by the cool and the pretty. We both had outrageous and fantastic notions about what life should be, and we were both way too good at school and felt terrible pressure to be perfect successes. And then we both kind of fell apart after high school and got really lost. Our friendship phased out and in several times over the years, but we phased back in, in a major way, just over a year ago. Now we're both imperfect technically-successes moving towards completely smashing our notions of success and just trying to be happy and fulfilled instead.

There is a third person that with us makes a triangle, and his name starts with J. He's played a big part in our rotating lives - he was my best friend, then S's boyfriend, then S's best friend, then our shared best friend. I'll write an homage to him sometime too... But for now, this is my homage to S, the most devoted and kindred friend that I've ever had. The beautiful, brightly singing bird that flits outside my window, trills up in the trees, and beats her little wings so bravely.

I love you, S!