On Tuesday of all days

Met BeautifulLife face to face for coffee this morning, after a year and a half of occasionally meeting on Blip or Facebook. We met because of her friend, Folkie Booknerd, who I met on Blip because of Spitzimixi.  We talked of Kenya (where she lived) and Lesotho (where I lived), so far away from us now.

Meanwhile Barrioboy  is in Cairo and Cairo is exploding, and he asks how he can really be there at just this moment.

The world is an astonishing place. It is astonishing that any of us meet each other, that any of us are where we are right now, that we are so squarely ourselves and connected.

It reminds me of this poem:

Astonishment
by Wislawa Szymborska

Why after all this one and not the rest?
Why this specific self, not in a nest,
but a house? Sewn up not in scales, but skin?
Not topped off by a leaf, but by a face?
Why on earth now, on Tuesday of all days,
and why on earth, pinned down by this star's pin?
In spite of years of not being here?
In spite of seas of all these dates and fates,
these cells, celestials, and coelenterates?
What is it really that made me appear
neither an inch nor half a globe too far,
neither a minute nor aeons too early?
What made me fill myself with me so squarely?
Why am I staring now into the dark
and muttering this unending monologue
just like the growling thing we call a dog?

The picture has nothing to do with anything. BeautifulLife didn't want to be blipped. I liked this piece of sidewalk.