Posts tagged with "friends"

Recollecting The Modesty Of Conviviality

You’re sit­ting inside the local Timmies, when you can see the driz­zling rain com­ing down from the black sky through the win­dow. The work­ers are in the back where you can’t see them, but you can hear them talk about mind­less sub­jects, con­ver­sa­tion to pass the grave­yard shift. Soft, com­pla­cent music plays all around you, drown­ing out the silence but numb­ing you to sound. A group of four males in their late twen­ties sits at anoth­er table, there for a mid­night snack, dressed in their dark rain clothes. A cou­ple shares a table by the win­dow, both bare­ly talk­ing, sim­ply look­ing out­side.

There are three oth­er peo­ple at your square table, where the seats piv­ot on a pole and feel hard but com­fort­able. You feel at ease, as if you can say any­thing both in and out of char­ac­ter and not wor­ry about what oth­ers think. You relax enough to cachin­nate inclement­ly, to speak rib­ald mat­ters, to not speak at all. You let down your guard, some­thing that rarely hap­pens even in close com­pa­ny, but you feel vul­ner­a­ble but safe.

The con­ver­sa­tion is bal­anced and the pace is just right. You’re filled with jocun­di­ty and wish the feel­ing would­n’t stop as soon as you step back out­side into the rain. This sim­ple sit­u­a­tion has put you in good spir­its. You won­der if you’ll ever get to do this again and feel the same way. You hope that fate will place you here again in the future.

With your friends on a chilly fall night.

Dzhanechka

I feel worth­less.

She hugged him tight round the neck, her arms trem­bling, as though she was try­ing to pass her soul to him with that kiss. No, it was right and prop­er she should die!

I find that I’m begin­ning to com­pare myself with oth­ers, in order that I feel bet­ter about myself. I keep telling myself that I have no debt, no ail­ments, and bare­ly any respon­si­bil­i­ties. I’m a uni­ver­si­ty grad­u­ate, I live in a great city in a com­fort­able apart­ment, I’ve final­ly fall­en into a great bunch of stand-up friends. Why does it feel as though I have noth­ing, that I’ve accom­plished noth­ing, that my life is noth­ing? That in my near­ly 23 years of life, I have noth­ing to show for it but a few fris­sons and a life or two affect­ed.

If only I was being too hard on myself.

Busy Days, And Movies At Home

My days here have been busy. I’m usu­al­ly doing some­thing from one moment to the next. I now under­stand a way of spend­ing one’s time dif­fer­ent­ly from one I’ve ever expe­ri­enced. I find that I’m gen­er­al­ly a per­son who’s cos­mopoli­tan enough to be able to pass time enjoy­ably with most peo­ple. However, most of my friends seem to be doers, always need­ing some­thing to do lest an awk­ward silence set in. These last five days have been filled with com­fort­able silences though, just from meet­ing and hang­ing out with peo­ple who are com­fort­able enough with each oth­er to sim­ply let con­ver­sa­tion flow at its own pace. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to look at hang­ing out with my friends in the same way again.

I watched In The Bedroom with Darren yes­ter­day. Although I thought it was a very well made film, with usu­al­ly mov­ing (though drawn out) sto­ry­telling, I did­n’t enjoy it very much. There did­n’t seem to be much of a mes­sage at the end, which leaves the enter­tain­ment of the film up to the the sto­ry, char­ac­ters, and plot, all which I felt to be very shal­low. The film is sup­posed to be about “the bonds of mar­riage and the lim­its of for­give­ness [being] put to the test”, but there was only one major con­flict and only a few shal­low attempts at devel­op­ing char­ac­ters and motives. It just did­n’t seem to go any­where, and with­out inter­est­ing (to me, at least) events tak­ing place, I felt as if my time would have been bet­ter spent else­where.

Speaking of films, I’ve been able to catch a few trail­ers which have piqued my curios­i­ty. The Good Thief with Nick Nolte seems like an amaz­ing­ly styl­ized movie (direct­ed by Neil Jordan) about a retired art crook doing one last heist. It appeals to me because of the way Nolte seems to bring a pres­ence of con­flict­ing human­i­ty with his slurred speech and rugged looks. I also find the slow, patient tune at the end of the trail­er to fit per­fect­ly with the cin­e­matog­ra­phy, the way Nolte looks at his lighter before clos­ing it on a bright­ly grey day with the move­ment of a city in the back­ground. All of this from a trail­er, and I’m already hooked. Kill Bill also looks amaz­ing, in a cheesy, Tarantino sort of way.

Quixotic

People who know me know that I gen­er­al­ly tend not to get my hopes up. I nev­er see the point. If I get my hopes up and things work out in my favour, then I would have expect­ed such an out­come, and I become unap­pre­cia­tive. If things don’t work out, then I feel even worse than had noth­ing hap­pened. On the oth­er hand, if I don’t get my hopes up, I’ll feel great when I get my way, or I’ll feel fine when noth­ing works out.

Yet I can’t help but get my hopes up for what the future may hold. Lately, things have been going well in such a way that I feel com­fort­ed. Jonathan has made a great attempt at try­ing to get me a com­put­er relat­ed job with a decent salary. I applied to a beau­ti­ful apart­ment with Nick which, I was told, I should have no trou­ble obtain­ing occu­pan­cy. I will be grad­u­at­ing soon, and free to live my life with a free­dom only matched from the sum­mer days of my child­hood.

But most bright to me seems to be the future with my friends. I’ve met a great bunch of peo­ple, of which I immense­ly enjoy hang­ing out with. They have offered to help me move. They enjoy the same things I do. They are peo­ple I can con­fide in. They have got­ten excit­ed about my ten­an­cy with Nick. Who else do I know is inter­est­ed in my hap­pi­ness? What oth­er friends that I’ve had are so keen in spend­ing time with me?

My friends make the future seem warm and bear­able. Even when I admit to myself the way the future may work out, the fact that I may not get this job and indus­try con­nec­tion, the fact that my rental appli­ca­tion may be denied, I can’t imag­ine any­thing going wrong with these won­der­ful peo­ple. Sometimes I wish that I did­n’t feel this way, that I could keep my mind in check. But I can’t.

And I don’t care.

Art For Art

I once made an origa­mi rose for a friend. Written inside was a poem I com­posed one night when I had an excess of for­lorn emo­tions. One of my best pieces. In order to read the poem, she would have to destroy the rose, ruin­ing the piece in itself, though sati­at­ing her curios­i­ty. If she nev­er opened it, she would nev­er be able to see exact­ly what I wrote.

For me, art must have three attrib­ut­es; it must be aes­thet­i­cal­ly pleas­ing in some way, it must car­ry a mes­sage, and I must be able to under­stand it or relate to it in some way. So many peo­ple seem so super­fi­cial to me when they put paint­ings in their house, or stat­uettes, about things they don’t under­stand. They own these pieces because “they like them”. They enjoy look­ing at them. Do they under­stand what the artist was think­ing when he or she used a cer­tain stroke of the brush? For all they know, the sculp­ture could be a mes­sage about any­thing they nor­mal­ly would­n’t agree with. They don’t under­stand what the artist was try­ing to do. They can’t appre­ci­ate the piece. It sad­dens me.

So I made anoth­er piece, as a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the rose I made for my friend, because I enjoyed it so much, it is a sym­bol for some­thing I cre­at­ed. It is a sim­i­lar rose, but with the words “art for art for art for…” writ­ten all over it. When I look at it, it reminds me of my friend, what I was think­ing when I gave away such a pre­cious piece, and what she’s doing right now.

And to this day I don’t know if she opened it.