Collection of moments

This trip to the zoo was quite pleasant. The sun peeked through the clouds before ducking behind them again at random intervals. It was breezy and cool enough, though I still dabbed at sweat while we wandered the paths and stared at animals until children got too loud and drove us to the next exhibit.

"Hey," Friend said happily when we stopped by a glass enclosure soon after arriving, "someone's in the right pose!" She took out her camera and began to take photos while I folded my arms on the top of the glass and rested my chin atop. I watched the meerkats form piles so they could nap, peered down into their tunnel system and followed a particularly busy creature as he moved to and fro. But there was one who had stationed himself in the plant and stayed still.

I didn't take my camera - Friend's pictures were far better than mine last time and I didn't feel like carrying a case around. But she worries over lighting and focus and potential blurriness. There's proof that worrying works though - it created a series of pictures of which I'm excessively fond. You can see the change in light when the clouds covered the sun. I can smile when the animal stared directly at us before turning away and deciding to mostly ignore our presence. And I can think of standing next to Friend at the zoo on a pretty day in early May. A random collection of moments, no one of which sticks out as overly profound or important. No story feels particularly worthy of a blog post. We neither laughed extremely hard nor cried, though there was sighing over calculations we'd done wrong or cooing over excellent shrimp rolls and some sort of coconut soup and our respective curries from the Thai place and waiting while I copied my CV and grabbed a few last documents from the office.

Friend sent me an announcement for the zoo the other day and noted there are cool events in August and September. She concluded by saying it was likely that neither of us would be here then. And what I'll miss - what I always miss when I move away from a very dear and much beloved friend - are those random collections of moments and the easy ability to have more.