The magic inbetween.

 I was thinking about magnets today. 

Yeah, I know - meme time, right?

But anyway - thinking about how you can't see the magic, the actual stuff that boggles your mind. Magnetism is the magic you can't see, that happens between the magnets that you can see. The space in between, that contains all of the wonders, and the indefinable things that occur in the distance between a blink of the eyes, and the drawing of a breath.

All of this hit me when I was walking across Waterloo Bridge, on my way to lunch with two of my oldest friends and companions. Back in London, for the first time in well over a year. Back in the city I love, in the city that raised me. I looked all around, and suddenly saw everything that happened in that space. I could see myself, in cabs, crossing the rainy streets of the embankment at dawn. Walking arm in arm with a lover, along the pavement. Running through these back streets and alleys, catching trains and tubes. On my way to meetings, to a job, to a photo session, to meet friends, or just to kill time.

Now, that time was reversing, and coming right back at me: the memories tumbled back through my mind, so fast and intensely that I actually gasped. I could see everything I was then, everything I was now. Both parts of my life, happening at the same time. I've always thought that time isn't linear, it's like a ripple. We're not on a straight path, from birth to death - our entire existence surrounds us, constantly. What has been, and what will be, circling ourselves in the present. I was momentarily lost in the wonder of it all. To be encircled by your life, to see it all laid out like that was hugely moving. And it wasn't maudlin, either: no weeping for what was past, only a sense of gratitude for a life lived, and for the experience and knowledge that it imparts. 

I walked over the bridge and headed towards the Strand, full of life, and love, and London.