She called the other day. She was reading something that reminded her of me, she said. How long had it been since we’d talked? Two years? Three years?
Such a simple and mysterious thing, to call someone — to pick up a phone, dial a number, and summon from across the miles and years a voice, a presence, the familiarity of a time long gone. How amazing to be at your desk, absorbed in your thoughts, and the next moment to be communicating with someone far away, your minds arching across space and time, unaccountably joining what a moment before was separate. Is distance real? When we touch each other, in a moment of understanding, isn’t the physical universe of crippling distances and lost memories for a moment repealed? We take it for granted — as we do most things — seeing a phone as “just” a phone, a conversation as a string of words, but to call someone is an act of pure magic, an act as intimate, as tender and reckless, as reaching across the table and giving a perfect stranger a kiss.
