Onsen Buddy

I'm in Montreal for the NABSA conference this year. It's an absolutely fantastic city; full of all of the life that I love in Philadelphia, but done in a slightly European, progressive way. The important thing however, is that I was able to reconnect with Shane Smith, human being par excellance, and onsen buddy of yours truly. Jennifer and I were a bit shell shocked when he and Lara broke up years ago, and honestly we ended up gravitating more towards her, as she'd kept in better contact over the years. Shane is a man of the moment though, and we missed him a lot.  I last saw Sumisu-san when we visited during Canadian Thanksgiving in 2005. We went rock climbing, and hung out with Lara's parents a bit.

Tonight, Shane picked me up at my hotel, and we headed back to his place to catch up a bit and have a couple of beers. I can hardly express how great it was to see him again. He's doing well, working intermittently as a camera man on a number of TV shoots and some commercials. Most recently he was filming life on the Jersey Shore for the Évasion show on Quebec's Travel Channel. He probably knows more now about the 'downna shore culture than I do.

What was great about seeing Shane again was the almost audible click of connecting with a friend from long ago. It'd been twelve years since we last saw each other, and yet it was so obvious that we were still friends that it's a bit painful to write this. He's a good man, who cares about people in an intuitive way, and who collects good people to himself.  In a lot of ways, we're not that similar; he's eager and polite, I'm pessimistic and inconsistently considerate.  What we do share is a sort of human compatibility where I can know and understand this differences between us, and accept them and love them all the same.

After he insisted on treating me to ramen and heading to Dieu du Ciel, the mold-making microbrewery of Monteral, I had the pleasure of meeting his girlfriend, Frances. She is great, in the same sort of natural way that Shane is great, and that Lara is great.  Let me write it here, and keep the promise to myself that we will meet up again sooner than later. That's the right way to keep a friendship going.