intimacy:
I haven't responded to Madoka's email from over two months ago. With the loss of all my emails in the computer crash, it's even easier to just ignore it and be comfortable in our communications having been non-substantive and relatively superficial for more than a year now.

I wonder how things may have been different if I had made some effort to be closer to her through the years. Say, "Dammit, yer my best friend and I'll move to wherever you are if I can't coerce you to move where I am". But it was not meant to be, and truth to tell, I can't even imagine it. Still, I wonder if she might have been an anchor for me in some way. It would have been nice to have someone around who was more enlightened than me.

In a surprise move, however, I did finally call Sadie, who, as pathetic as it was, was my closest friend in my waning years in San Francisco. One of the last things she said before I left SF was wondering if she could have done anything to make me stay. In hindsight, I'm wondering, too. But no, there was nothing she could do, me being way down the totem pole of her friends; a principle reason for why it was so pathetic that she was one of my closest friends.