A cowboy, a scholar and a muse walked back into my life one night.  I had just finished reading a book, a novel with characters so compelling, I simply had to read the entire work in one sitting. I turned the last page at 2:00am, my heart in my throat and my head too filled with the story to sleep.

I went downstairs and found some characters of my own.

The first to appear was the cowboy, in his ten gallon hat and suede vest.  As always, he was a man of few words, but his “Hot damn, if it isn’t Miss Koenen” made me laugh so hard in its startling unexpectedness of night, I almost smiled myself right out of my chair.

Then, another brilliantly written story was waiting from the scholar.  In our first meeting in the last 25 years, we “spoke” more words at greater depth than we had in four years of shared experiences, in person.  He made me laugh out loud too, with his sharp wit and insightful turns of phrase.  Now I am eager for more chapters from him (and would like him to guest blog someday soon).

Then, when the middle of the night could not get any more incredible, there was the muse.  I have thought of her so many times in the last 20 years, and wondered how she was and where she was and what she was, but I never put pen to paper to find her myself.  She was my free spirit at a time in my life where I was painfully serious.  About everything.  I looked up, and there she was!  We started ‘talking’, and all of a sudden it was the most natural thing in the world that I wandered downstairs in my jammies at 2:00am and found her there in my house.  She sounds happy, and peaceful, and still fiercely smart.  And then she was gone, and I was alone again in the dark.  But I felt less alone than I have in a long, long time.

Silly, silly, silly me.  I thought facebook wasn’t powerful.  It’s a time machine.