Thoughts, Part II

Who are my two you’s, the one which I left yesterday in the grocery store at the checkout counter where I paid the clerk for my box of crackers, and the one that will be me when I next emerge from my home or when someone stops by for a visit? These are the two you’s in relation to others that do what I do and, they say, are me being what I am. We’ll come back to them another day.

For now, is not the small crocus which has emerged early from its winter’s sleep, though alone in the woods, still in relation to me? Though distant, it is a relation, just as you and I are in relation to distant galaxies as yet unknown to us.

And you and I are in relation to each other just now through these words that I write and that you will not read for perhaps another few days. Through communication of thought translated into words on paper and translated into meaning after the shapes of black ink lines commute through your eyes, over optic nerves and into the understanding that you give it. Thus are we in relation. Even when lying alone in bed as it rains in Lent.