Up ahead of me this morning, a woman rounded a corner and I experienced a joyous ‘recognition flash’.

Shelly!

Instantly followed by: but that’s impossible – Shelly died years ago – of breast cancer – in Australia. This is Amsterdam – our friendship began in New York – this can’t be her. All in a millisecond.

This woman, who had some indefinable-likeness-to, but definitely-wasn’t-Shelly, approached. Oblivious of my existence she then donned a brightly-patterned face mask, and disappeared inside a supermarket.

While navigating the next few hundred metres of bustling canals, bridges and alleyways on my way to meet a client, my thoughts turned to memories of Shelly, which always makes me happy – she was a dear friend. Which merged into: was it the ‘indefinable likeness’ that triggered a flash of (mistaken) recognition in my brain? Or did Shelly’s spirit / soul / energy simply need to signal to me today?

And then there was my client, Sandra, greeting me in the sunshine. Fine! And you? Sure, just up these stairs and along here –

En route to my office, on some freshly-mopped tiles, I slipped in my smooth-soled shoes, lurched sideways, and nearly took down both of us. “Phew, that could have been bad!” Sandra exclaimed, after averting my fall. Sandra’s also lived in New York. Turns out the same thought had flashed through both our minds. Where was the yellow tape?!

In America, wet floors in public spaces are commonly demarcated by yellow tape with black, bold-faced lettering reading something helpful like CAUTION: WET FLOOR – lest anyone should fall, injure themselves, and then demand millions in compensation.

The Dutch however, are not litigious people. Ergo: no yellow tape.

“One time long ago,” I told Sandra, “a friend of mine held a Halloween party in a suite at the Waldorf Astoria. A whole bunch of us went in drag, and somewhere in a shoebox I have videotape of my friend Chad, clacking his way through the hotel lobby in four-inch heels and smudged makeup. As it happened, the hotel had just cleaned a section of their marble floors. Never one to miss a comic opportunity (and knowing he was being filmed), of course right by the yellow tape, Chad hammed up a brilliant prat fall. We all burst into hysterics, but this poor group of older Hassidic Jews who’d just spilled out of a function room, were all aghast to see this trashy drag queen sprawled akimbo on the Waldorf’s wet floor. The rest of the video’s just a jumpy mess of our entire posse shaking with laughter.”

Smiling, Sandra thanked me for this story as we arrived at my office door. I showed her inside and we got stuck into our work – which involves both writing and conversing.

Because we’re friendly but not friends, I didn’t tell Sandra about the woman who wasn’t Shelly. Nor did I tell her of Shelly and Chad’s close friendship – or mention that Chad also died – in New York – a few years before Shelly – of HIV-related lymphoma – and that his was the hardest death I’ve ever experienced. It all would have taken much longer than a millisecond.

My own writing task today was to devise a solution for how two eight-year-olds, in parallel but different worlds, could communicate across their great divides. But my pen wouldn’t move. All I could think of was: how odd that Shelly chose to ‘show up’ this morning, followed by Chad less than five minutes later. What a strangely special morning.

And then suddenly, there it was. The connection I’d been searching for, for a number of weeks already. Of course! My two characters would connect with each other through nature, specifically through a network of trees. That was the most logical and believable connective tissue between their two worlds.

I acknowledge I’m a bit slow. If this story was a comic strip, my character’s brain light would have switched ON a few frames back already. But what I can say is: I know I wouldn’t have reached this natural, tree-solution in my writing today, if Shelly and Chad hadn’t come into my thoughts and led me there, by virtue of showing how I’m still connected to them, and via them to so much more, so long as I remember to ‘tune in’.

And now that you’ve read this story, we share a connection as well.

I write, and lead writing workshops, because I believe in the transformative power of creating connections. And in these days of increasing polarisation I believe we need connections – which in turn bring about empathy – more than ever.

Welcome to Flex.

I hope these writings will lead both you and me, and friends and connections of ours, to all kinds of unexpected destinations.

by Matthew Curlewis