After giving a talk at an international meeting a colleague of mine approached me. She congratulated me, thanked me for inspiring her and told me she’d be going for lunch with a common colleague of ours to discuss, with him, about how she and I might collaborate more. I thought how strange to meet him and not me to plan how the two of us, she and I, could work more together. How strange she’d ask me overseas and not at the university were we both work at. I was confused, somehow, as I was last night after your visit. You came to me, we talked our souls out, I even cried a little bit, blame my hormones. In the end, we gauged our insides accurately to make sure there wasn’t anything left inside to let out and share. The volume of untold words displayed by the gauge was zero, we both read it. We should meet more often you said then, at the door. Meetings are always so difficult and insufficient, I thought.

Water Valley (NH) and back home (Vienna, AT), Summer 2015