I've been wondering recently about how people simply vanish from our lives and how we vanish from other peoples' lives--all this vanishing while we're still alive. So far I've thought of two reasons.

There is the pace of modern living which makes intimacy difficult in spite of emailing; we just can't, we feel, spend or take the time it takes to grow a relationship. More recently I've thought we vanish from each other's lives when we can no longer be playful together. Put another way, our games have become finite (winners and losers) -- as if we have lost touch with a playfulness which is infinite, where the goal of the play is to just keep on playing and where we change the rules to make this happen.

Watchya think?

T-

Well, I'm reacting to another interpretation of a friend's vanishing - because of death. A friend died this week and I just can't get my head around the fact that I won't see him again. It continues to be a surprise for me many times a day. It changes perspective of course, the fact that someone's in your life and then just gone makes me look around at who's still here in this musical chairs game. So when it's not a vanishing out of choice or apathy or just being busy, it sure the hell is final. Nothing enlightening here I guess, just some thoughts ...

-P

Perhaps not enlightening but surely poetic:

". . . this musical chairs game . . . "

" . . . it sure the hell is final."