Connections and Jet Trails

A few days ago I got a facebook email from someone I hadn't seen in over 20 years. A friend. An old friend...from school, perhaps starting from 8th or 9th grade. I remember her still...slender, two long braids (yes, hair could not be left loose in most Indian schools), her uniform dark blue skirt just grazing her knees, white shirt buttoned up all the way, black shoes, white....really white socks.

I emailed her back. A couple of days later I heard back from her. She was in Paris on her way to London for a vacation. I could have met up with her while she was still in France but it was already too late.

How fluid our lives have become, the lives of our generation? We move across borders as if boundaries don't exist. Vacations outside the country were a rarity when I was growing up. No longer. Living in India or the U.S. or Europe doesn't matter. We leave our homes traveling across, soaking up other countries, other cultures, then return to where we live.

Can we really call them homes any more? These places in which we live and cook and eat and love, and then leave.

Do you ever look up into the sky and see jet trails? They reminded me of giant fingernails scoring their way across the sky. Love marks. And now I wonder if perhaps, instead, they are the ephemeral traces of our lives that try to intersect but then slowly evaporate beneath the heat of our frantic and frenetic lives.

I wonder about these things sometimes.