When an old lover I happened to see. . .

I was sitting having dinner with my brother at one of my favorite haunts in Annapolis, when an old lover I happened to see. He came through the door, a lady trailing shyly. We said hello and hey, how'd you do? and stammered goodbye. With no regrets or longing. Simple.

I tried to write about something a few days ago here, but the words were insufficient. I've been reading "If on a winter's night a traveler" by Italo Calvino and writing as narrator and author, he writes:

"This is what I mean when I say I would like to swim against the stream of time: I would like to erase the consequences of certain events and restore an initial condition. But every moment of my life brings with it an accumulation of new facts, and each of these new facts brings with it its consequences; so the more I seek to return to the zero moment from which I set out, the further I move away from it: though all my actions are bent on erasing the consequences of previous actions and though I manage to achieve appreciable results in this erasure, enough to open my heart to hopes of immediate relief, I must, however, bear in mind that my every move to erase previous events provokes a rain of new events, which complicate the situation worse than before and which I will then, in their turn, have to try to erase. Therefore I must calculate carefully every move so as to achieve the maximum of erasure with the minimum of recomplication."

This is how our lives play out.Wanting to make it over and not wanting to lose what we had, not wasting. Once upon a time, in a land far away, was a true and innocent maiden and a strong and honest man...
Then things got complicated.