Talk To Me

I've been taken back to my youth by a visit from the woman who was most influential in my young life. She was a rebellious and unconventional young woman who grew to be a classicist, an academic, an intellectual, and ever more conservative in her lifestyle. I want her to talk to me for as long as it takes to make me understand this journey toward the right when traveled so far from her radical youth. I was not as radical as she in my youth but have grown ever more so in my old age. We still have the same affinity for each other but we have moved past each other and are on such different journeys now. I can't bear the thought that the thirty years since we last saw each other is a marker for how far we've grown from each other. She, as much as my terrible family, influenced the journey I took toward this now, this here, this fascination with words and their power. We won't have another thirty years. We are old women striding toward death and time is of the essence. What sent us on these philosophical trajectories? Why are we here now at this time in our lives and in the vast scheme of things and places, so near and yet... Thirty years is a lifetime and for us like a blink of the eye.