Ghost?

Ever felt like everyone around you is moving forward, away, far while you are in the same job, same apartment, same clothes (where did this come from?), same thoughts, same (new?) experiences?
I was visiting Hotlanta and boy, this time, it was everything but hot. Every trip to this city has been pleasure. I never seemed to have enough time between "hi"s and "bye"s to everyone I wanted to meet.

When I travel, I watch my old friends turn new, new friends become old and friends who are in between old and new, move to one of the groups. When I meet these friends, I am always surprised at the new things they have to share with me..starting from "I am moving to Seattle, I got another exciting offer" and immediately jump into a complete description of the entire process to plain silence. While I initially started writing this blog with the idea of talking about how everyone has something new in life. Then a "new" experience born out of a trip to a friend's place to watch a movie changed the perspective of this piece.
Things hadn't been smooth between me and this particular friend of mine. After avoiding few of his calls and invitations, I decided to be mature and show up to one of the events-a movie. It is not the complete and detailed description of every event I missed that surprises me. It is the silence that follows "so..whatz up?" that does. I could actually see the chord of friendship snap and I saw it happen this time.
Which leads me to an interesting questions: When do friends stop being friends? When we find the special person in our life, do we spin cocoon around the two of us that we become totally oblivious to the happenings in the rest of the world?How can two friends, who had so much in common in the past, suddenly go out of topics to talk about?What is with this sudden "Hi Stranger" feeling that brews in the coffee pot instead of a warm cup and tons of news to exchange?So what happens to these relationships that just wither away and just hang around as memories tucked in our minds?
I wouldn't particularly consider myself a feminist when I say this: I was under the impression that women loose touch with friends after the big W and the even more bigger event-a new arrival. I wasn't comfortable loosing such good friends to a simple reason: lack of time. I am sure lot of my friends would have the same thing to comment about me. But as usual, Life had a surprise package for me; men do two!!(misspelled on purpose).
As I sit here in this situation, during the wee hours of the morning, wondering about relationships that wither, wilt, would bloom..bla bla bla: I can see two roads to choose from:

I can maturely acknowledge the fact that we have just "fallen out of friendship" and move on or I can continue to brew coffee pots with hi's and bye's but serve it to the ghost-as a friend I knew, is no longer him.