I'm not really sure when I first met 2016.
You know, it's like one of those math questions, with the trains: we took off from San Francisco, traveling minus one hour per two hours, but by the time we left it had already started East, joining parties at one hour per hour.
I do know that we met mid-air, before Shanghai; but nothing else. I may have been asleep, or reading. Perhaps as it passed through the plane it whispered in my ear, causing me to look up from my book and wonder again if the light bothered neighbours; or maybe it waved the wing hello-and-goodbye, one special bump on a particularly turbulent flight.
Had 2016 and I not been rushing in opposite directions, I think we'd have taken tea and the time to catch up, commiserate, share stories and plans. On parting, I'd have given it some gifts to give to other on its route: a powder box full of excitement and support for friend's trajectories, and a charm-bracelet of hugs to link us across time zones.
Eventually, in that moment feeling both too soon, and too full for continued chatter, I'd wish 2016 on its way with a glass-stoppered vial for collecting our imagined futures, a container in which they'd mix and merge then be released to travel the breeze and fill our breath.
Where I arrived, 2016 had wrapped the world twice over: I was just in place for the trailing sunrise. Left, then, to my own device, I'll ask directly: what sensations do you breath in, what thoughts do you breath out, what do you push against or clamber up, what feelings fill your chest? I'm traveling this January, seeking the forgotten familiar, and looking to correspond. Drop a line!
~N