Stranger

Why does one decide to walk on a different side of the street on a particular day, at a particular time, for no apparent reason?
Today I did just that, I walked by people eating on the pavement outside a cafe  - I glanced at two men eating, walked by, did a double take, and walked back toward them.
Yet again, someone I haven't seen for a long time, not someone from a distant land, but from a distant time in the here and now. A time of drinking and good food.
After I posted the last entry I received an e-mail from a friend who had read it.
Firstly, I am so happy someone looks at my entries. I only rarely get any comments, so it is like sending out posts into a vast void. I sent out that post over the baffling constructs of space and time, and not so long after I received an e-mail from someone in Jerusalem wondering if I remember that time when . . .
And yes, of course I remember.
Many years ago, in another lifetime, I lived in Jerusalem. My neighbour was from America and we spent many hours over coffee and cigarettes. listening to music, and chatting, and he told me about New York, and its boroughs. I had never been to America, and never expected to go there. But I loved to imagine all the areas he spoke about.
Cut to quite a few years later.  I lived in New York and spent weeks and months walking the streets, remembering all he had described. One day, after having been there at least 7 months, I sat down in a cafe in Greenwich Village and wrote him a long letter telling him about all my new experiences that were somehow familiar to me because of him. I went to the post office and bought an airmail stamp and posted that letter just before I got on the subway to West 4. I exited at West 4 and climbed the steps to the exit. I looked up and saw a pair of legs descending the stairs and the gait looked strangely familiar. My gaze moved from the sneakers up, and there he was, my Jerusalem neighbor!
The universe and all the creatures in it are nothing but a bunch of sub atomic particles which move around, bump into each other, and continue moving around again.