Leaving on a rail train (in T minus 7 hours): thoughts on friendship as I leave San Francisco

I start my return trip tonight, and it's not that I don't want to leave—I have so much to go back for, and Dee sent me a picture of my ridiculous cat and so now of course I miss her—it's that ... I wish I didn't have to. I have loved ones in my city and in my other city, in the state up and the state down, on the opposite coast and five thousand miles away, and I'm fine with that. It's magic, that we can build friendships in the ether, over distance and time zones, sustain intimate connection for years and never meet face to face. On the train down to San Francisco I sat with a woman many years my senior (she must have mentioned her grandbabies a dozen times) who laughed it away in the best sense: Oh, you kids these days, bless you, and I think you'll have an amazing trip. And I have. There's too much to write about now (as we enter the headless chicken stage of packing and eking out every last shared minute before I leave), but I have. It is as natural to live here for a week as it is to live in any of my other homes, and Express and I together can be as stupid and as poignant in person as we are online.

I want my homes, my Portland, my visits to Corvallis, my ever-ready suitcase. I want VoIP calls and silly IMs. I want to spend a whole day on the train and arrive exhausted, and I even want to leave. I want friends in the wrong time zones, and random people in weird corners of the internet who become friends. I want to live with them, and to never meet them in person.

I do, all the time but right now. Right now, I want to pull all of you in a circle around me, wherever that lands us and whatever it means, and have you close, and make you stay.