With Friends Like These

We have a great deal more kindness than is ever spoken.  In the still of the night it is the thoughts and prayers another says for your aching heart.  In the center of your joy it is the ones who bask in your light and share in your triumph.  In the chasm of time it is those who are ever present on your path.  Our lives, while perceived as short, are a series of moments that yawn out in the past and make up the intangible essence of our future, congealed together to form years, decades of existence.  It is not good for man to walk this earth alone; to help us endure this journey we have the rarest of gifts that can be given by another, friendship.

Each of our hearts will testify differently to what defines the value of a friendship.  Some will say it consists of the ever bubbling font of desire that wants nothing but the best for the other.  Some will claim it is lies in the capacity to feel sympathy and empathy for the other's lot in life or the compassion to make that lot theirs as well.  While others will assert it is the honesty that exists in that space; an honesty so bright and pure that it can even be spoken when the truth is the hardest to hear.  Surly all would agree that it consists of the mutual understanding of the scrubbed down essence of one's self and the trust that blossoms from it, enabling each the emotional support that can only be found therein.

While all can denote the generals, for the answer to what is the meaning of friendship, it lies within our hearts, because true friendship can only be felt, and not expressed.  The intimacy nurtured there is the fodder for our souls, allowing us to just love and be loved in return.  Friendship is the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words.  It is the acceptance that comes on a consistent basis that makes out lives rich of color and full of vigor.

Of late, I spent days in the company of my oldest friend.  He knew me before I knew myself.  Upon the cusp of adulthood, I was brash and unrefined.  Yet, when I was new and friendless, Tass brought me in to his fold and gave me a warm place to blossom.  I wonder what has made our friendship endure while so many others fell by the wayside.  Our longevity is beauty; our relationship is the very essence of friendship.  Although not immutable, our endurance has proved that we are able to be there for each other at all times, ebb or flow, ups or downs, light or dark.  Being each other's friend has required understanding, which has shown me how to be sensitive.  Being each other's friend has called us to always give the benefit of the doubt, which has helped to mold my ability to allow love to overcome my pride.  Being each other's friend has compelled us to share unconditional acceptance of the true base of our beings.

While Tass is my oldest friend, there are so many others who have come into my life like a star aglow.  Lustrous and luminescent, each one has changed me in enduring ways and ameliorated my character.  Ranger showed me the joy of letting go of judgments and allowing myself to be love unconditionally.  Her openness gave me the bravery to allow myself to be open with others.  The Preacher gave me the courage to rebuild when I though all was lost and the bliss honesty can bring.  He challenged me to be more than was expected of me and to give more than was required.  Red taught me the value of self-examination, self-discovery, and the immense value of self-control.  She allowed me to open myself to new wonders and the importance to love yourself first.  Frankie challenged me to be better at all that I do no matter how small the task, to let go of my neurosis, and to see every situation from the other person's perspective.  His ability to show me ways I can elevate myself is a skill now so precious to me, I scarcely can imagine my progress to this point with out it.  The Peacemaker showed me how the utter value in being nice, and inspired me to emulate her.  Princess drilled into my consciousness that self-pity was of no value and had no place in a happy life.  Flip has demonstrated that others can accept you for all that you are, even the parts of yourself that you fear sharing the most.  His ability to create a zone free of judgement and ridicule that allows me to be so honest, that I am able to discover things about myself that would have been lost otherwise.

The value I place on friendship, I can liken to no other.  Each friend gives to me something so pure and essential that while it is not visible to the eye, it is always felt by my heart.  Although some have been lost along the way, the values and lessons they all have left with me will not be forgotten.  All are the rocks and rill that direct the path my flow goes.  They are those that make my burden lighter, the ones with whom trust is more than a word, the ones with whom who loyalty is freely given, the ones who accept the shortcomings, the ones who stand by you during your darkest days, the ones who can listen without just waiting for their turn to talk.  To all my friends out there, I want to thank you for the part you played and all that you are.  Thank you to those who understand my past, believe in my future, and accepts me just the way I am.  Thank you for just being you.

Writing Exercise: "I thought I saw..."

The Preacher once told me that the best way to improve my writing it to write everyday. I seem to be at a standstill with each piece one of my fiction pieces, so decided to go to a creative writing prompt website, and go with the first prompt I came upon.

Prompt 68 - Begin with "I thought I saw..."

I thought I saw your shadow amongst those dancing on the wall, weaving in an out of fluid flux of wind animated trees. I thought I heard the rustle of the carpet beneath your bare feet, and waited, just waited for the pads of your fingers to trace down my bare back, rolling across the alternating hills and valleys of my spine. The need for your touch is so palpable, that goosebumps form in anticipation of that which will not come.

I am ever in awe of how my body responds to your touch. The kiss of your skin upon mine transforms this mundane vessel that takes me from dull tasks of the day to day, that carries me to my obligations of society. There is no better way to say than when you touch me, there is fire. The skin beneath your hand bursts with electricity and rips across my entire being. Mind, body, and soul. Like an oven, the heat lasts long after its use is done. My body craves you so, that it retains that tingle for hours upon end. Each nerve alive and reaching out to recover your touch. Your touch is what keeps me going when the day seems flat and my life static. I simply have to recall the magic in your fingertips and I am alive again. Your touch makes me sing, it makes me long, it makes it possible to go on.

Tonight as I lay here, mourning a night we must spend apart, my mind wanders back to a different night. A night that started in grey, muted tones, and ended with my rebirth. It was the night that day shone, for it was the night you came into my life. That night your presence made the mundane magnificent. Leaning against the wall, I watched you through the throngs of people, and felt myself come alive. Suddenly aware of all around me, I began to notice life's nuisances with my new senses.

Awakened and alive, I could feel the artificial chill clashing with the collective body heat rising off the crowd upon my skin. My back prickled against the textured rills of plaster prodding me through my thin gauze dress. Then when your blue pools finally turned to me and met with mine, my heartbeat became so loud in my ears that the choir of voices became a mere drone. Crossing the room toward me, I saw scenes for our life together that at the time, I dare not hope for. Your hand sliding over the slight crest of my stomach, my cheek upon your bare chest as my endless locks spread in all directions, the slight pause as you take in my scent before gently laying a kiss upon my forehead. I saw it all before it happened.

That night did you know that this is was what love was going to be like? Were you aware from the start that this thing would completely envelope us, that it would take over everything? Had you known that this was how love would control you, would you have allowed the conception to begin in your heart? Each day as the pervasive thing moves through my being, and changes everything it touches, I wonder these questions to myself. Would the person I was, the one living in half-tones of color, so selfish and self-absorbed, have allowed the change had the outcome been known for the start? For now my being is so intertwined with yours, that I would scarcely know myself without you. Two halves to a whole. Is that healthy? Perhaps this virus we call love's greatest trick is not letting those whom it has affected know what they are in store for.

Is love merely a creation of the mind, or is our love so real that it can be perceived through the senses? When your hand envelopes mine, cupping it from the top and completely encasing it as your fingers curl towards the bottom and that tiny spark transfers from your insides to mine, tell me, is that the transmission of love? My love is so poignant that it must be a tangible and measurable thing. How can something so all encompassing and overwhelmingly power be a simple product of a fallible imagination? When you are above me and my hands rove across your bare back, your love seethes so close to the surface that it is palpable. Our love is more powerful that the draw of gravity or the pull of magnetic forces, so how can its power not be a force of nature? To look at you is to know the truth about love.

My reflections are doing nothing to stem the torrent of loneliness. So lazing done, eyes fold together in prayer, I drift off to sleep. It is the only way to soothe the ache of your absence and to hasten the morning of your return. For when I wake, the salve to my soul will be the brassy tones of the morning sun kissing your face. Until then my sweet love, until then.

From Today to Yesterday

Tonight as I settled behind the wheel, I turned the on heater and as a blast of warm air bathed my face I caught a slight hint of that new car smell still hiding somewhere way back in the vents of my car. I had not smelled this smell in months. Slowly as I became accustomed to my car, climbing in and out everyday that smell faded from notice. But tonight I was falling back in time to the moment I opened my driver's side door for the first time on the car lot. The smell was so strong as it wafted out into the muggy night air. The memory is so sharp that the whole scene is laid out before me from the way the halogen lot lights changed the shade of my shirt, to the bite of my purse upon my shoulder, down to the way the bottom of my feet were slightly sticky against my plastic bottomed sandals.

Often one thing can be so associated with another that you don't even realize it is gone, or changed, or missing till something jolts you back to how it used to be. Long after the event has come or gone or the person has come in and left out of our lives the smell or taste of them is still sitting on your brain in intangible drops hidden beneath a tangled mass of years but when you come upon them they are poignant edifices of memory. Falling into one can conjure up a complex vision of the things you love, the things that make you who you are today, and the things you never want to lose.

This is how a song will come on my iPod and I will be insantly be transported back to an aisle of Target trying to decide between plum and purple nail polish. It is how I will almost be able to feel the warm beat of the sun upon the apple of my cheeks as I walked across campus towards home just by a the smell of freshly mowed grass. It is how a passages of a book will bring back the heaviness of heart from a time when the words were more than literature but reflected my own feelings. It is almost as if it was a short cut from today to then, from now to yesterday. A direct string that could pull me back to that very moment that my nose was full of a lover's perfumed skin or I felt the crackle beneath my hands of breaking ribs the first time I did CPR.

While some memories are vaulted to the front of our minds, most moments in our lives are ever so ephemeral; gone with a beat of a butterfly’s wings. Our lives are fluid and wash into the past second by second, lost forever. What is it that makes some moments go missing in the muck and mire of my memory, subject to the ravages of a corporeal vault, while others are so brilliant that they blaze when visited? I can tell you what Red will order at almost every restaurant in the greater Austin area, exactly where Flip left his flash drive, the very shade of deep azure blue The Preacher's eyes are, or the way Frankie clasps his hands and crinkles his left eye when he laughs, but cannot tell you how old I was when I learned to whistle, what my fourth grade teacher's name was, or a single pair of shoes I had before the age of 15. The mind chooses memories like a child collecting rocks. Some are chosen for their aesthetic value, some for their size, but most are chosen indiscriminately, plucked from obscurity and made special.

As calendar days flicker past, more of my life will slip between the thin pinch in the hourglass. Before I know it, most of my sand will have settled along the bottom. Reviewing my past, I will not be able to remember days, but will only be able to remember moments. My life available for recall at an instant when the most amount of memories will be at my disposal. While my mistakes and regrets will surely come to mind, I hope there will be memories that will warm the cockles of my heart, memories that I cannot even list here because the best is yet to come. Those memories will be the sum total of who I am, for good or bad because even at the end the past is never dead.