It's amazing, these feelings I've had today merely because I wrote a letter to an old friend, Julia, sending it off to her college to be forwarded to her wherever she is -- in Brick, last I heard, but possibly elsewhere. And hope. Driving this afternoon and tonight, I thought about her as I listened to tender ballads of Mary Chapin Carpenter and I hoped I've found her and that she gets back to me. I've imagined that she's now single somehow, and we'll go out and I'll tell her how she was the only person I met while dating in high school about whom I ever said, "If I wasn't in a relationship ..." I imagine we'd start dating, hitting it off so well so fast, and I'd spend nights with her, sometimes going there after work to crawl beneath the covers late at night, and she turns to me, barely awake, to snuggle up close to me. Or another night, out for some reason, some function to dress up for, and she's in a tight, slinky black or red dress, her hair done up but with strands falling around her face, the perfect mahogany frame for a work of art. Her beautiful, slender body holding that dress so perfectly, wonderfully elegant legs extended from the curvature of her hips.

I picture a sweet, tender girl just like I knew in high school, days spent talking in physics class ...

But she's probably still attached -- maybe near or already married. "Girls like Mary don't stay single." Not like Julia, either. And all these thoughts will amount to nothing, and we'll meet for lunch someday. But I can still dream -- What have you got if you don't have dreams?