justine, the french girl from the ill-fated birthday excursion i wrote about a few days ago, did in fact contact me. wow! let’s hear it for the internet, and maybe even for starsailor dot co, the glue that binds us. she and i agreed that if we had disappeared from each other forever, we always would have wondered . . . and we only would have wound up dead this way, knowing very little, and getting that little fragment wrong too. just kidding (sort of). but yeah: it’s a long story. i reached a long ghostly arm out into the darkness of time and space, and was met halfway by a friendly stranger. sometimes you’ve just got to do the work. nothing comes from nothing . . . ex nihil nihilo fit, and so on. ok bye