How to interpret this virtual place known as the web? There are so many negative stories that abound but I'm here to tell you that there are some miraculous ones to be told as well.

In fact, it's been a year of reunion and uniting unlike anything I could ever have thought possible. It began back in the spring of this year, when I was going through a particularly difficult period with a wide variety of relationships in my day-to-day life; there was pretty much a stalemate across the board. Then one day I received an e-mail from someone who had found me through my articles on the web. This woman said she knew me from my childhood and that she and the group of girls I had grown up with, and whom I had not seen in twenty-four years, were planning a reunion - did I want to join them? I have to confess that when I left the city I grew up in two dozen years ago, I closed many a door in order to move on. If there was one thing I wasn't expecting, it was a knock on that particular door.

I went out of town about the same time I received the e-mail and couldn't stop wondering what to do. Did I want to go back and reconnect with my past? By the time I returned from my getaway, I had a phone message from this same woman who was obviously not going to take my lack of enthusiasm for an answer. Then I got an e-mail from another woman in the group and it began to register that they were a force to be reckoned with, and I cautiously sent back a reply. I have to say I was genuinely touched by how much these friends immediately wanted to reconnect with me, and we finally did a few weeks later. I walked back to the home of one of my friend's mother's and knocked on the same door that I had last knocked on so many years ago. It was like two worlds meeting, and then overlapping, and then becoming one. It was a fantastical thing - a magical gift that brought out feelings of incredible disbelief and many tears of joy, and thanks.

I must say that after that reunion I felt like I was floating for many days - suspended in time - as though I could feel the implications of all of the forces that had brought us back together. It can make you very humble with regards to the master planner of all things, if you know what I mean.

Then just last month I had an opportunity to visit London and see a very dear friend perform there. It was actually my best friend, who is presently based in New York, and had performed in London on previous occasions, which unfortunately I had missed. I decided this time I could not let that happen again.

If I may just take a little aside here, this friend moved away twelve years ago and we still manage to maintain our long distance friendship, with the help of, amongst other things, this virtual communication device we all know as e-mail; it has its uses!

Well, this trip only started there. I was also going to be meeting a friend with whom I had started an internet chat six years ago and who now coincidently happened to be living in London. When we first started chatting he was living in South Africa and I had no expectations of ever meeting him. Last year when my New York friend was again in London, I had the two of them meet - and they hit it off like a house on fire. And where was I? Kicking myself and making sure not to miss out on any chance to be there this year.

So there I was, in an English pub with one of oldest friends and a very dear and somewhat surreal physical embodiment of a six year virtual friendship. Having this experience over three thousand miles from home only served to add to the incredulous nature of the moment. The three of us laughed and cried, and laughed and cried some more - it was like uniting with a family I never knew I had - not underwhelming!

And in final poetic fashion, last week I received an e-mail from a long lost cousin, living in Hawaii, who I had last seen over thirty-five years ago (am I dating myself here?). He happened to do a web search of our last name and was directed to a website that my articles also appear on. We really don't even remember each other, but he said the nicest things and bridged a gap between us too huge to even attempt to define.

So on these long winter nights, when I can't find a friend for miles to see or to chat with, I remind myself that because of this most magical virtual world, my real world is by far a more wonderful, if not mysterious place to be. And a friend is a friend, no matter where they are.