June 3: Kind of Northing, New Chapter, Friendship

A kind of northing is what I wish to accomplish, a single-minded trek toward that place where any shutter left open to the zenith at night will record the wheeling of all the sky's stars as a pattern of perfect concentric circles.  I seek a reduction, a shedding, a sloughing off.

I chose this passage from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek not because it contains any specific wisdom that I feel pertains to my life this evening.  I chose it because it's lovely, poetic.  And it's about night, reduction, shedding, sloughing off the skin of day.

Today was my last full day at the cardiology office.  On Monday, I begin a new chapter, or an old chapter, depending on how you look at it.  I'm returning to the job I held for close to 17 years.  I will be working with one of my best friends of close to 25 years.  Of course, I'm leaving a job where I've made some really good friends, as well.  So, tonight is both happy and sad, like most situations in life.

After work, I went out for drinks with a couple of my friends from the cardiology office.  One is a young woman with whom I've worked five days a week for the past two years.  I will miss her a great deal.  She's a young, single mother, and she got me.  Laughed at my jokes.  Read books I gave her.  Let me read her poetry.  And she saw me through one of the most difficult times of my life--my sister's death.

So, I leave friends behind, and I return to friends.

Saint Marty has been blessed with friendship his whole life.

My best friend at the cardiology office thought this was hilarious . . .