Elwin is a friend of mine whom I’ve never met … in the same room.  We’re members of the Evolutionary Collective, with members across the world. 

We meet on Zoom, so the love we have for each other has been confined to the rectangle of a computer screen.  Not yesterday.  Not today.

Elwin is visiting family in Leiden, Netherlands and I took the train from Gent to be with him.

We talked and we didn’t talk.  All was connection.  All was easy.  We’re companions.

Here we are at lunch:

And here is Leiden in the rain.  The canals.  The terraces.  The buildings soaked in history.

And the wee streets:

Amid our wanderings was Hortus Botanicus, Leiden’s botanical garden.  And I found a friend.  Many years ago my wife Jody and I hosted a symphony of house plants.  My favourite was what you see – Calathea Makoyana.  It’s as if an artist took a pen and drew tiny black lines on the leaves.  I bowed in remembrance.

And this vision.  It looks like a carpet around the plants but it’s really little bits of green floating on water.

***

Just before we said goodbye at the train station, Elwin took a marvelous selfie.  I’ll share that with you tomorrow.

It’s a fine journey, this life