Dragonflies

I finally got around to taking my car to be cleaned yesterday. Sidwell the car cleaner stayed behind at the old offices so now I have to either use a commercial car wash or do it myself.
While I was cleaning out all my stuff I spotted my window dragonfly (stuck onto the small window on the driver's side) and carefully removed him so that he would be safe.

The story of the dragonfly is one of those amazingly inexplicable things, and happened a few years ago when I went to visit friends in Australia.
Before the trip I was at a local craft market looking for gifts for my friends. It's not easy - Australia had fairly advanced regulations for the time around importing wooden artifacts, for example, and African crafts are most often made from wood. I wandered around the market, picking things up, putting them down again, until I came to an oil lamp with sandblasted dragonflies. Not the most practical gift to travel with, the glass would need very careful packing. But something about it touched me and I believed my friend Renee would love it. On a previous visit she had brought me a beautiful oil lamp - it has a blue cover with gold elephants painted on. It was to remind me of our road trip through Botswana and Zimbabwe and it's one of the few material possessions I value.
As I picked up the dragonfly lamp my cellphone rang. Before I even answered it I knew it was Renee, 7,000 miles away in Sydney.
I answered the phone and she said to me "The strangest thing just happened, I went onto the balcony and I was thinking about you when a cloud of dragonflies flew around me. I had to call to find out what it meant"
I looked at the lamp in my hand and smiled.
Walter (who knows about these things) tells me it's called synchronicity. All I know is that this little plastic dragonfly Renee brought for me on her last visit stays stuck on my window in my car to remind me of my friend and to let me know we're not that far apart at all.