Minestrone

“I want to make soup tonight,” I wrote Kamilla at 8 this morning.
“Mmmmm. What kind of soup?” she asked.
“I don’t know, any ideas?” I asked.
“ummmmm…Minestrone.”
“Nah, French Onion, that sounds good. Come over, we’ll make soup together and hang out,” I said.
“I’d love to, that sounds super gooooood,” she wrote back.

And that would have been super good, and that would have been super cooool, and we would have had a really nice time talking about random things and laughing, and debating world issues and not debating world issues, and drinking wine…but Kamilla lives in Paris, and I live in Los Angeles. There was a time that we both lived in Cairo, and we passed every day doing nothing but walking around, smoking sheesha surrounded by toothless men, drinking beers at Horreya with the societal degenerates and foreigners, drinking coffee in high end cafes with the elite and the same foreigners. That was over 2 years ago.

I think about my friends. I think about my friends everywhere. I think about Michael Erz and I laughing hysterically in the lounge at our camp kids; I think about Astrid and I drinking beers and smoking cigarettes nightly in the frigid German winter, trembling and musing at drunkards and West African drug dealers; I think about eating pizza with Matteo, staring at the Coliseum without another Euro in my pocket; I think about my homeboys and I, going to the mall on Saturdays to pick out clothes for the night, nights full of fighting and drinking and girls and jokes…all the sheer ignorance and ecstasy of youth.

I don’t live in the past, but I visit her. I bring her cake and tea, and we sit for a minute, but not too much longer because I’ve got so much to do. She doesn’t mind, she’s glad to have me, besides, she’s got things to do too. We converse about lots of things, but this morning we talked about reinvention and evolution specifically. We never talk about history, she thinks it’s self-centered.
“Sergio, you have to keep changing, growing, developing, it’s the only way to live and be happy,” she told me.
“Oh yeah, and what about you?” I asked, feeling slightly defensive.
“What do you think?” she asked rhetorically, winking at me and sipping the Earl Grey steaming beneath her nose. She’s always different, she’s always got something new to say. That’s why I keep coming back.

It’s all so far away now, all so long ago. Kamilla in Paris, Mary on River Road, Kamis in Melbourne, Marta and Ernesto in Germany, Waleed in Aswan, where the Nile flows, and so many others. F A R A W A Y. And they’re not the only ones. Christin in South Central, Sleepy in Santa Clarita, Edwin in Northridge, Josh in Sherman Oaks, Erbin in Sun Valley. Some of my closest and oldest friends live 30 minutes away, and I’m lucky to see them once a month. We used to kick rocks, check out girls, or bump 2pac for hours on end daily, but now we’ve all just got so much to do. Kids, careers, responsibilities, wives, girlfriends…lives; those things we all strived for, fought for, chased after. Where do we go from here?

I finish my tea, pick the last crumbs of cake off my little round plate, give her a kiss on the cheek, and head back out into the world, to reinvent, recreate, learn and grow. I think I’ll make minestrone after all.