Pilgrimage and Reckoning

The Frank Visit went about as I expected. He left poorer in cash and richer in old vinyl, and I needed a couple of days to sleep in and recover. He loved Alcatraz (kept saying he'd been "sprung" after we got back to the city). He ate like a starving Newfoundland at every American-style place we could find and loved his birthday cake. And he took a full 12 hours to get back home on what normal, road-averse drivers like me make a five-hour drive out of. But that's his standard M.O.. He's still marveling at the pile of records and CDs he found up here and speculating about when he'll make the trip next year. I'm planning my own vacation, to somewhere tropical in November.
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I found a dear old friend not long ago, or rather he found me. And then he sank from view and hearing again, so silently and swiftly that I was left re-reading our emails to see if it'd only been a dream. Over the last 10 years I'd begun to think I'd never see nor hear from him again and had accepted that, though always with resigned sadness. And then, contact! Long discussion! We caught up over the phone and pledged to talk again soon. It's not to be, I assume for the same reasons as before--all out of my control. And so I'm holding this smooth worry-stone of loss again, tumbling it from finger to finger and meditating on the nature of friendship, my expectations around it, the concepts of attachment and detachment and of love in the face of both.