ife and fiction are blood brothers but they share more than the intermingling of plasmas. Forster (at least I think it was Forster; perhaps it was Burroway) wrote that much of fiction is made up of characters disconnecting and reconnecting which, within the context of fiction, makes a lot of sense and I’ve been applying that principle ever since. But, at the time I read it, I didn’t bother to wonder if it applied life as well. Or, at the very least, I didn’t think to apply it to life as it happened; I looked back on my past and saw the truth of it but now? Right now?

It’s true, though. Life is a series of connects and disconnects and reconnects with people. In fact, people place a lot of emphasis on this process that I was intellectually blind to. A friend of mine made it clear to me that one of her measures of friendship was based on whether someone was willing to reconnect with her after something terrible had happened. She brought this up because something terrible did happen and there was a massive disconnect amongst my friends and she was one of the ones who, through no fault of her own other than the fact that she was the freshman on the team, got left behind when people began scrambling to control the damage and work to rebuild friendships that had been razed in the firestorm. She read a lot into this lacking as I suppose most people would. Why would you bother even trying to be friends with someone who doesn’t really show any sign of wanting to be your friend? It’s stupidly obvious and I was entirely blind to it.

I’m thinking about this now not only because she brought it up but that she brought it up while she and I were actually reconnecting ourselves. It had been awhile but it wasn’t either of our faults; she was busy with school and a thousand other things and I was busy with work and a thousand other things. There has always been a sweet attraction between us and I had taken confidence in that, knowing that eventually we would rebuild our connection. It was just a matter of time.

I’m not really going anywhere with this. There’s no punchline. I’m just thinking about life as a series of connections and that, especially after what had happened a few months ago, thinking about it like that helps it make more sense, at least to me. Watching people scramble, emotionally desperate, deserted, or droughted, vacated, connecting, disconnecting, reconnecting has made it clear. Maybe it’s whether connections exists or not between people that forms the core of all things and not the people themselves. I know it’s unpopular to think that people as individuals aren’t the utmost expression of any given situation but when, whether in fiction or in life, you emphasize the spaces between people rather than people themselves, you might find it easier to find your way through the firestorm that will, inevitably, arise around you.