We get together every two years. It’s usually the only time we see each other. We don’t talk much, or text all that often. There’s really only this visit.

Are these friendships, or moments of retreat marked alongside people who are open to the past? The focused, concentrated time we all shared together is just so far behind us, now. But when our summit arrives all of that time gets revived, so that we don’t bother to assess each other in the present - we don’t need to.

Maybe this is wrong: drifting away over the expanding months, and then clawing back familiarity for a few days. It seems to me that that’s what we have; what our resources allow us.

Like a crude high these friends of mine quell the sting of the mundane; its symptoms most pointed at night, in the hour before bed when another of your days draws to a close. There are only 701 days until we will see each other again.