Since I work too much (as I’m frequently told), I decided that I’d leave work at 6pm this evening and spend the night on the Downtown Mall, socializing with the thousands of people that descend on it every Friday night. I walked the length of the Mall a couple of times, seeing almost nobody that I knew. I ran into a few people, chatting briefly, but didn’t know what to do after about 30 minutes. There were thousands of people. Talking, hugging, playing, shouting. They all knew one another. I didn’t know any of them. So I returned to my office, my re-entrance into society unsuccessful, and spent the rest of the evening (also unsuccessfully) trying to compile both mod_perl and PHP into Apache. Pretty lame.
After a couple of hours, I felt like I should be on the Mall, like I had somebody to meet. I realized, before walking very far, that it was Carolyn Corry. Autumn always meant Carolyn coming back to town to run the Film Fest. I used to walk around expectantly around the beginning of October, knowing that Carolyn would find me on the Mall somewhere and whisk me off to meet politicians, artists, or maybe just to get some pizza or coffee.
Carolyn died one year ago today.
Now I’m at home.