Cathy and I were very close friends in college, where we were the same year and major. I suspect that Cathy’s personality is more similar to mine than that of anyone else I know, though our interests have diverged a bit since college. We have also been described as interacting like the Japanese peasants in the movie Seven Samuri, which served as the role models for the characters of R2-D2 (Cathy) and C-3PO (me) in Star Wars. Cathy is from the Bay Area and now lives in San Francisco, in part because she loves the fog.
“To Cathy”
June 2018, in Catonsville, Maryland
I think that, when I first met you in Liz’s lair, I was afraid.
Even bound by fears, you were wild in a way I didn’t understand.
Now, visiting you among the fog and the sea spray,
I am reminded how much I love your wild nature.
Not chaotic – not exactly – but not quite of this place:
Part of a world that should be as much as of this one that is.
I know I can’t be like you: my will is weak and my spirit brittle,
And the song that calls to me is not the one you hear.
But when we walk and talk and flap and bounce together,
I am reminded that I am not alone
so long as you dwell among your fog and hills
upon the shore of that distant, foreign sea.