What would you do if you had a twenty-four hour span that was just flawless? Where you got to hang out with someone you liked, and it was easy and warm and fun and you felt like you could do no wrong? Even if you were exhausted, even if the conversation turned to sad topics, even if you didn't end up accomplishing everything you'd thought you would. And you didn't know how many more days like this you'd get, that you had to hold on to this one with all your claws. Would you write the whole thing down? Try to draw it? Or let it slide back out of your memory like everything else does when you've crossed the thirty line and the fabled near-eidetic memory is more like a threadbare eiderdown?
I'm in that space. I had a day like that. A night of laughter and Indian food and good music; doors opening. Then the latest imaginable breakfast, a breakfast that would rightly have been called teatime in England. We walked along the Pacific to the zoo. I couldn't get a decent photo of the strange dog that looked like a toy you might win at the carnival, stuffed with sawdust and covered in the cheapest possible fur. Sticky little children ran up to the thick glass that was all that stood between them and massive feline destruction and we said bait to each other. The aye-aye enclosure is still closed with no explanation, so no aye-ayes to be had for love nor money. A pigeon walked around in the sun-slanting diner and it took forever for the food to come. Evening slid in and it was time to fall back into the stream of time and responsibility.
This is (obviously) about one of the friends who's leaving. Not the tiger, silly. The tiger's not going anywhere, and boy does she know it. I'm really not as morose as all this sounds, just... quiet.
