friend / foe - the sonnet

“Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It’s not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.” - Muhammad Ali

I have friends i’ve never met; i don’t know how that happened, but it is as certain as i sit and write. Nor am i compelled to track them down with my gratitude; it may be they are friends for that reason alone. I don’t know. I owe much more than gratitude to those i am lucky enough to include as friends. My life has been made better from their care, sometimes even the lack thereof. It may be the completeness i have found in friendship i find most helpful - they know your bullshit, and it’s okay. I’ve often struggled with that limitation of my own character, as though one can eviscerate the unpalatable from one’s world and thereby from one’s self. My better friends have reminded me of the compassion i had lost to resentment, fury, pain and the thousands of other irritations coerced from humans through betrayal, indifference or any manifestation of the delusion that one has no choice. I’ve heard “a friend is a gift you give yourself”, as well as “a friend is someone who divides the grief and doubles the joy”. There are millions of homilies about friendship one can read when trying to fathom “what happened to all my friends?” In the highly socialized California suburbs of my youth, school was every bit as Balkanized as anything found in the Serbo-Croatian wars of the early 90’s. The major distinction being there were few people of color to cleanse, so not unlike “Lord of the Flies,” cliques formed and set upon each other with a similar fervor found on that island. Depending on one’s perspective, this time in my life happily corresponded with the kaleidoscope 60’s counter-culture epoch of hippiedom. From our parents viewpoint, it could not have been easy to hear their progeny mutter sneeringly under their breath “kill everyone over 30.” The upside would have to be that for an instant in time “a brotherhood of man” became nearly visible - a speck in time that unraveled with drug deals gone bad and the ravages of substances killing off your brethren. It didn’t seem to help much that about the same time broads got sick of the brotherhood bullshit and with good reason raised the noble flag of “sisterhood” - itself subject to the pitfalls of any nobility.

But man i had some good friends, male/female - animal, mineral and spiritual. I will never forget the look in my father’s eyes when Jimmy B______, a wanderer passing through from New York city hoisted himself up to the roof of our crashpad and backflipped 12 feet to ground - continuing his conversation with my father as though nothing had happened. Pop had been a gymnast in school and his expression was one of profound regard - a feeling i’ve often had considering my closer friends. There was a magic about that time which manifested unexpected synergy. For example in the same humungous backflipped yard where the crazy amongst us had walked on coals too drunk or too faithful to care, 12 of us and a frisbee stood in a circle crisscrossing the disc, when somehow the circle began to revolve and for an inexplicable period of time the circle held and spun as fast as 12 powerful youth could run. Through the haze of time - i’ve nearly convinced myself the frisbee never fell; if it did, it wasn’t often or for long .  .  .  I am sure that élan is the same adrenalin found by the “masters of script” scaling overpasses in today’s world. However, camaraderie is at risk in our present time due to the atomization of our social fabric. This may come as a result the “great migration” on the information superhighway into virtual reality - if you are not found on the screen - who are you? My take on that question is not born of computer queries, but is a visceral feel informed from direct human exchange. I cannot imagine how difficult it must be for youth of today to evaluate a person from a list imposed, not by human standards, but from the clickbait standards of any social network attempting to command the traffic necessary to secure more and greater advertising revenue. Yet, just like the old French adage, “plus les choses changent, plus elles restent les mêmes. With friends’ lists numbering 1,000’s, for one to know who one’s friends are is even more important now then ever. Sister Rosetta Tharpe sang, “don’t take everyone to be your friend,” but is nearly drowned out in the zeal to find recognition for one’s self-worth in the badlands of the internet. Truth however remains the same, one cannot be a friend to anyone until one finds friendship within oneself, for once that happens - any friend found becomes serendipity, and any friend lost becomes one more lesson on the importance of patience.

Much like the confusion of 60’s California as an adolescent, today’s “terrorists-under-every-bed” fury blurs human traditions to a point where they become nearly unrecognizable - loyalty betrayed by the temptations of large stacks of money in close proximity to large piles of drugs, or integrity lost to instant musical fame and fortune. But this tempering of human values is not new to our kind; Aaron Swartz would have been a hero to any period of human history of which i’m aware. It is heartening to believe that this quality of selflessness can be found in the friends i now have and those i’ve yet to meet. I have always been improved by friendship - be that from disappointment in my own character, or vice versa. The scope of a friendship is often defined by hard times - the rigors of life, or as Cliff S______ liked to say, “it ain’t all cake and ice cream;” Yes, as a matter of fact, i did break my hand hitting a wall after he came onto my first wife, albeit prior to our marriage; why do you ask? In all fairness to him, and consistent with the complexity of friendship - that was one of the more important lessons in my life; i no longer hit walls, friends maybe - but never walls. The chimera of internetedness twists complexities of our human differences into a shape more resembling the process of normalizing a database, than the reality that was Cliff and his dodgy values. Loyalty is dicey and partially why for me this topic of friendship holds such fascination - what is it to be loyal? What role does that elusive concept have to our kind? Just as personal gain then tempted any “brother with the dope”, today’s basing a faceless billion dollar plus business on brand loyalty and predictable keyboard behavior is insane, but includes entertainment only a Googol could provide by mutating “do no evil” into “do know evil.” 

It may be the desire for too many friends is a threat as similar as greed and temptation are to one’s intrinsic value - even more so than anything found in hippie myths? I don’t know. What then of the partition which Larry G_____ sagely observed as between friend and acquaintance - the same Larry who replied when asked “how do you have so many friend?” - “i have a table saw.” If we are to limit the number of human beings we call “friend” to those who are most complete in their acceptance of our attributes, good and bad - what of the multitude of humanity seeking the closeness of society that is part of our nature after tens of thousands of years sitting at home fires recounting stories of our ancestors’ loves and battles over love? A friend is rare, but friendly people are not. It is a recent innovation of the ruling class to so effectively divide us, one from the other on such superficial grounds as race, occupation, education or even gender? The irony to me is how we have been so thoroughly divided while simultaneously being yoked to the most fake aspect of our rulers - their money. I choose a friend based on the sincerity of their behavior - good or bad. All i can gather from those who lead, is the consistency of their demand that i absolve myself of choice - conservative/liberal, one is pretty much the same as the other. A good friend may have a different opinion from my own but will attempt to raise my consciousness rather than command obedience. I am not that good a friend, for my opinions have become sacred cows which in my despair i cling to not much differently than a hungry baby at an empty tit. But i am lucky, for i have somehow managed to pick friends, and acquaintances, wiser than myself. It used to be i would pick friends more popular than i perceived myself to be. Perhaps i thought popularity was contagious. At some point the cost of loyalty to such superficiality became greater than the cost of self-respect. Part of the odyssey of befriending oneself includes a thorough inventory of oneself, or what Leonard Cohen has described as a “bitter searching of the heart.” Initially my self catalogue was comprised almost exclusively of positive traits - residue from a pernicious denial of self-loathing. Predictably, fair-weather friends fell to the march of time with fewer and fewer available to commiserate my innocence.

Turns out, after i stopped bullshitting myself, i was the one holding others to a higher standard than i applied to myself - not very friendly. “Every man’s conscience is vile and depraved. You cannot depend on it to be your guide, when it’s you who must keep it satisfied.” - Bob Dylan. It has been said that books are the closest of friends and the best of counselors; i would have to add music to that adage. Early on my sister gave me C.G. Jung’s “Man and his symbols” which discusses at length a darkness that i was long unable to comprehend, for in my friendless state, all i could see around me was happiness and the fraternity of man. I resented deeply that i alone seemed subject to betrayal, disappointment and broken promises - this after having toed the unrealistic line defined by my list of superior traits. G_d in her wisdom teaches with an infinite patience, which in my case was really necessary. “So you want to carve beautiful statues in order to have people love you? Okay, but know this - with your two dimensional vision that’s gonna be kind of hard.” Try as i might, she was right - it is damn near impossible to make a three dimensional object when all you can see is a flat surface. Who was i gonna whine to about that? She told me the truth; i ignored what i knew in my own heart. There was nobody to blame, but myself; nor was there anyone to forgive, but myself. How could i do that, i hadn’t done anything wrong? Nor was g_d done with me; how many other imperfections were there? If my sacrosanct edifice of raison d’être was no more than an unsatisfied emotional hunger used to include and exclude people from my life, what then? Too late, there’s no getting some horses back inside once that fucking barn door is closed. I had no one left to befriend but myself whether i could or couldn’t carve statues brilliantly, love enormously, fear unrelentingly or hate with disregard to my own wellbeing. I still don’t know who the friends are out there i’ve yet to find; but i’m pretty sure, i’m not the only person on the planet with broken dreams, unresolved fury or a love that just won’t quit. 

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friend / foe - the sonnet

Who is friend who is foe, i want to know?

Who doesn’t - does it matter anymore?

I consider those who’d see me dead - foe;

and those friend - who find within more amor.

Bin Laden didn’t want to see me dead;

that would be one on a nuclear trigger,

or they who would take gold, and pay with lead.

It is not Islam that poisons water.

Nor did Jesus kill and go to heaven.

Hard as fuck it is to know - it’s my fault,

i who pray and like my bread unleavened.

Who could possibly see truth in a vault?

The sad truth is my only enemy

on earth causing my greatest harm, is me.