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What is a friendship, I ask, if not a reaction between two individuals; between two different personalities and modes of being? As a reaction, somewhat spiritual, somewhat chemical in nature, friendship is most susceptive to circumstances; to time, space and everything in between. Nevertheless, the strength of a friendship, and even its duration at times, lies solely in the unique integration these two distinctive personas form.
A powerful interaction may easily transcend physical remoteness and even the passing of countless years. Nevertheless, the process of aging in years does not leave its substances unstirred. If you but think you know yourself at a certain point in life, you’ll also be bound to wake up one day and realize what a fool you really were.
Everything changes with the passing of time, and personas are no different. With the changing of personalities, the interaction between them is also bound to change. Some friendships dig even deeper roots into the unchangeable cores of their substances, while others weaken, as the topsoil gets swept away by the wind of change.
As the wind of change whirls about continually, coming and going again according to its circuits, autonomous individuals, bond in ties of friendship, conjugality or blood may drift apart in their essences of being, to the point where, of what there once was a firm base for an integration, there would be very little left to date.
And so, you eventually find yourself eight years into a relationship, which has been an unconditional friendship, if there ever was one. Over the years, you’ve drifted eastwards, towards the land from whence the sun rises, flowed westwards, seeking knowledge where the sun sets, then pressed on to the place where it rises again.
Your friend, on the other hand, had remained in Prague, focusing her energies on an internal journey rather than an external one, and though you’ve been drifting more existentially and her more spiritually, you always found that you complete each other, by showing due respect to one another, the way true friends should.
By the time the earth shook so violently thousands vanished in a matter of seconds, there was very little left in you to be stirred. China has been wearing you down to the bone, and all you desired was for the semester to end, so you could use what little funds you were able to preserve in order to travel away from this land of ‘interesting times’.
The only thing which kept you slightly elevated above your dull, oppressive existence was your newly formed plan to meet up with your Spanish friend and travel in Thailand together. The only other things keeping you even remotely receptive were a couple of female students of yours, at a University in Xi’an.
Like the fresh breath of life itself, which can transform even a terracotta warrior into a living, titillating man, these nymphs would sometimes drop by your apartment, located within the school compound, raise you from that dusty tomb of totalitarianism and show you the wonders of a culture six thousand years old, now buried underneath thick layers of cultural, ideological and highly tangible wars and revolutions.
With the renewal of your correspondence, weighed down of late by life and the individual preoccupation with its more immediate aspects, you are resolved to be completely honest in your accounts of the many trials and errors you’ve endured; all the hardships and courtships that have been characterizing your life in far away China.
It was all received in a supportive and encouraging enough manner, fitting a true friend, as well as a genuine Buddhist, until you’ve hit the courtship bit. That’s where sympathy ended and a touch of moral repute surfaced.
“Whether my relations with my students are a moral act or not,” you wrote her in return, “is not for you nor anyone else but me to judge. Morality is not universal but a case by case issue,” you proceeded to claim, “and the least I’d expect from a friend is respect for my basic morality.”
Whether that claim is right or wrong, assuming such a thing as universal rightness actually exists and is made known to us, matters very little. What matters most was the fact that your reaction sure did seem to have offended your friend gravely. Sometimes, you can’t help but feel, it is righteousness that is the root of all evil.
Even after a dozen apologies were made for your harsh words, the taste of bitter ashes was still left in your mouth. Then, with a heart grown heavy and a sight grown dim, you left confusing China behind and boarded a plane to Bangkok.
And that’s where our story really ends.
As your plane is seemingly hovering motionlessly in its high and mighty altitude, like a sovereign, surveying his lands; first the kind labeled Vietnamese, than the one labeled Laotian, you contemplate the kind of friendship you might have assumed, expected or even forced, and about the tension that now exists between your friend and you.
Not only that you’ve been maintaining that friendship for eight years of your adult life by now, but also, had you been made to succumb to categorization, you actually would have granted her the title of ‘best friend’.
Furthermore, you now come to realize, she’d somehow become your fallback plan over the last several years. Should you end up desiring to live with one and only one woman someday, and be there no particular woman to fill that position by then, on the upper layer of your subconscious, a plan has formed to be doing that with her.
Since you do love her, and be it that her unlucky, unstable and unrewarding history with various men has shown every indication that she shall be available at anytime you might reach that somewhat inevitable stage in your life, she has become a perfect standby-bride-to-be.
Now, though, you’re not at all sure that that would do.
Nevertheless, your heart fills with joy and anticipation the moment the plane touches ground at Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok. A quick public bus to Khaosan Road and a lengthy foot draggin’ along its many alleys and backstreets, and the moment has arrived to march into the hostel where she is staying, take her in your arms and rejoice in your reunion, after four whole years you haven’t seen each other in the flesh.
Only snag is that she appears to have changed hostels.
From a note she had left for you, heads and tails are barely made, until you finally manage to locate her current place of residence and march right in.
She is obviously delighted to see you, and warmly shakes your hand.
She’s been spending over a week in Bangkok, awaiting your arrival, hence best not waste precious time on analyzing the situation but devote it to a rapid sightseeing of this vibrant hub instead, before boarding a train heading up north.
Plenty of time to catch up and figure things out on the crowded train.
In between being squashed to bits on a cracked up seat of rotten wood and hanging out the open car door for a quick smoke, the two of you are very careful not to bring issues such as sexual deviation or morality in general to the filthy dining car table.
Instead, you discuss your rather frosty reunion back in Bangkok.
“It’s not that I’m not happy to see you, but I honestly don’t quite know how I feel about you anymore. How I feel about us,” she admits.
You appreciate her honesty, you really do, and admit to similar doubts. Then again, you both agree to make the best out of your joined venture and get to know and understand each other anew.
With this resolution, you reach your destination and set out on a quest for that town’s absolutely cheapest hostel. After about an hour, though, she tires of dragging her feet, her backpack and her twiggy figure across town and rebukes you for the ragged manner of traveling you have grown accustomed to.
You try explaining the fact that your employment in China did not, unfortunately, yield much money, and that Southeast Asia is still a mighty long and winding terrain to explore, adding that if it wasn’t for her preference not to share a room with you, assuming she knows that you don’t expect any of that for-old-times-sex, the both of you would have long ago been unpacking your bags in a hostel suitable for both parties.
Still, you respect her wishes and take the next accommodation you come across.
By the time you reach Wat Phra Phutthabat, central Thailand, you are getting really fed up with visiting one Buddhist temple after another; literally following in the Buddha’s footprints, so to speak. You’re sick and tired of bold little men in orange dresses, of endless kneeling and humming, but most of all, you’re greatly disappointed with the superficiality of your communication.
Once she again refuses to cut down expenses by sharing a room with you, it seems as if the time has come for you to go your own way for a while; to see and explore different aspects of the untamed Thai nature, both human as well as nonhuman in character.
And so, you set out on your individual journey across the land, finally enjoying the liberty and unpredictability of a spontaneous voyage, without any commitment to guidebook recommendations or spiritual guidance.
When your time is up, you return to Wat Phra Phutthabat, only to find her still chanting mantras at the feet of a statue of a really fat man with a pointy hairdo, attempting to achieve enlightenment, by shutting her eyes and deducing that the world must simply not exist then.
Nevertheless, these few days spent apart did, however, seem to unclog her receptivity towards you. Finally, she begins to confine in you; share in her doubts and distress; deliver accounts of failed romances, as well as encouraging revelations.
You listen, express opinions, share accounts of you own, but are largely just plain happy to have your friend back.
Then again, when the time comes to board the train to Chiang Mai, capital of the northern territories, as previously discussed, it turns out that she has read about a charming temple out of the way, and would like to go there instead.
You argue that, as friends, one would expect more mutual consideration.
“Mira,”[1] she says, “just because I told you of my problems don’t mean that we are friends like before.”
“¿Pues, que somos? ¡¿Conocidos!?”[2] you exclaim.
“Pues si, hombre. Conocidos,”[3] is the wrong answer.
“Sorry,” you reply, “but I refuse to get downgraded this way.”
Then, you coldly shake her hand, hop on the train to Chiang Mai and never look back.
As she will not write you no more, nor will you write her. In time, you’ll be fighting urges to get back in touch; to confront or plead for the renewal of your friendship, but pride shall prevent you from doing so. Eventually, pride shall be replaced by acceptance and life will go on, as it always has, as it always will.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
[1] Look (Spanish)
[2] So, what are we? Acquaintances!? (Spanish)
[3] Well yes, man. Acquaintances (same)
What is a friendship, I ask, if not a reaction between two individuals; between two different personalities and modes of being? As a reaction, somewhat spiritual, somewhat chemical in nature, friendship is most susceptive to circumstances; to time, space and everything in between. Nevertheless, the strength of a friendship, and even its duration at times, lies solely in the unique integration these two distinctive personas form.
A powerful interaction may easily transcend physical remoteness and even the passing of countless years. Nevertheless, the process of aging in years does not leave its substances unstirred. If you but think you know yourself at a certain point in life, you’ll also be bound to wake up one day and realize what a fool you really were.
Everything changes with the passing of time, and personas are no different. With the changing of personalities, the interaction between them is also bound to change. Some friendships dig even deeper roots into the unchangeable cores of their substances, while others weaken, as the topsoil gets swept away by the wind of change.
As the wind of change whirls about continually, coming and going again according to its circuits, autonomous individuals, bond in ties of friendship, conjugality or blood may drift apart in their essences of being, to the point where, of what there once was a firm base for an integration, there would be very little left to date.
And so, you eventually find yourself eight years into a relationship, which has been an unconditional friendship, if there ever was one. Over the years, you’ve drifted eastwards, towards the land from whence the sun rises, flowed westwards, seeking knowledge where the sun sets, then pressed on to the place where it rises again.
Your friend, on the other hand, had remained in Prague, focusing her energies on an internal journey rather than an external one, and though you’ve been drifting more existentially and her more spiritually, you always found that you complete each other, by showing due respect to one another, the way true friends should.
By the time the earth shook so violently thousands vanished in a matter of seconds, there was very little left in you to be stirred. China has been wearing you down to the bone, and all you desired was for the semester to end, so you could use what little funds you were able to preserve in order to travel away from this land of ‘interesting times’.
The only thing which kept you slightly elevated above your dull, oppressive existence was your newly formed plan to meet up with your Spanish friend and travel in Thailand together. The only other things keeping you even remotely receptive were a couple of female students of yours, at a University in Xi’an.
Like the fresh breath of life itself, which can transform even a terracotta warrior into a living, titillating man, these nymphs would sometimes drop by your apartment, located within the school compound, raise you from that dusty tomb of totalitarianism and show you the wonders of a culture six thousand years old, now buried underneath thick layers of cultural, ideological and highly tangible wars and revolutions.
With the renewal of your correspondence, weighed down of late by life and the individual preoccupation with its more immediate aspects, you are resolved to be completely honest in your accounts of the many trials and errors you’ve endured; all the hardships and courtships that have been characterizing your life in far away China.
It was all received in a supportive and encouraging enough manner, fitting a true friend, as well as a genuine Buddhist, until you’ve hit the courtship bit. That’s where sympathy ended and a touch of moral repute surfaced.
“Whether my relations with my students are a moral act or not,” you wrote her in return, “is not for you nor anyone else but me to judge. Morality is not universal but a case by case issue,” you proceeded to claim, “and the least I’d expect from a friend is respect for my basic morality.”
Whether that claim is right or wrong, assuming such a thing as universal rightness actually exists and is made known to us, matters very little. What matters most was the fact that your reaction sure did seem to have offended your friend gravely. Sometimes, you can’t help but feel, it is righteousness that is the root of all evil.
Even after a dozen apologies were made for your harsh words, the taste of bitter ashes was still left in your mouth. Then, with a heart grown heavy and a sight grown dim, you left confusing China behind and boarded a plane to Bangkok.
And that’s where our story really ends.
As your plane is seemingly hovering motionlessly in its high and mighty altitude, like a sovereign, surveying his lands; first the kind labeled Vietnamese, than the one labeled Laotian, you contemplate the kind of friendship you might have assumed, expected or even forced, and about the tension that now exists between your friend and you.
Not only that you’ve been maintaining that friendship for eight years of your adult life by now, but also, had you been made to succumb to categorization, you actually would have granted her the title of ‘best friend’.
Furthermore, you now come to realize, she’d somehow become your fallback plan over the last several years. Should you end up desiring to live with one and only one woman someday, and be there no particular woman to fill that position by then, on the upper layer of your subconscious, a plan has formed to be doing that with her.
Since you do love her, and be it that her unlucky, unstable and unrewarding history with various men has shown every indication that she shall be available at anytime you might reach that somewhat inevitable stage in your life, she has become a perfect standby-bride-to-be.
Now, though, you’re not at all sure that that would do.
Nevertheless, your heart fills with joy and anticipation the moment the plane touches ground at Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok. A quick public bus to Khaosan Road and a lengthy foot draggin’ along its many alleys and backstreets, and the moment has arrived to march into the hostel where she is staying, take her in your arms and rejoice in your reunion, after four whole years you haven’t seen each other in the flesh.
Only snag is that she appears to have changed hostels.
From a note she had left for you, heads and tails are barely made, until you finally manage to locate her current place of residence and march right in.
She is obviously delighted to see you, and warmly shakes your hand.
She’s been spending over a week in Bangkok, awaiting your arrival, hence best not waste precious time on analyzing the situation but devote it to a rapid sightseeing of this vibrant hub instead, before boarding a train heading up north.
Plenty of time to catch up and figure things out on the crowded train.
In between being squashed to bits on a cracked up seat of rotten wood and hanging out the open car door for a quick smoke, the two of you are very careful not to bring issues such as sexual deviation or morality in general to the filthy dining car table.
Instead, you discuss your rather frosty reunion back in Bangkok.
“It’s not that I’m not happy to see you, but I honestly don’t quite know how I feel about you anymore. How I feel about us,” she admits.
You appreciate her honesty, you really do, and admit to similar doubts. Then again, you both agree to make the best out of your joined venture and get to know and understand each other anew.
With this resolution, you reach your destination and set out on a quest for that town’s absolutely cheapest hostel. After about an hour, though, she tires of dragging her feet, her backpack and her twiggy figure across town and rebukes you for the ragged manner of traveling you have grown accustomed to.
You try explaining the fact that your employment in China did not, unfortunately, yield much money, and that Southeast Asia is still a mighty long and winding terrain to explore, adding that if it wasn’t for her preference not to share a room with you, assuming she knows that you don’t expect any of that for-old-times-sex, the both of you would have long ago been unpacking your bags in a hostel suitable for both parties.
Still, you respect her wishes and take the next accommodation you come across.
By the time you reach Wat Phra Phutthabat, central Thailand, you are getting really fed up with visiting one Buddhist temple after another; literally following in the Buddha’s footprints, so to speak. You’re sick and tired of bold little men in orange dresses, of endless kneeling and humming, but most of all, you’re greatly disappointed with the superficiality of your communication.
Once she again refuses to cut down expenses by sharing a room with you, it seems as if the time has come for you to go your own way for a while; to see and explore different aspects of the untamed Thai nature, both human as well as nonhuman in character.
And so, you set out on your individual journey across the land, finally enjoying the liberty and unpredictability of a spontaneous voyage, without any commitment to guidebook recommendations or spiritual guidance.
When your time is up, you return to Wat Phra Phutthabat, only to find her still chanting mantras at the feet of a statue of a really fat man with a pointy hairdo, attempting to achieve enlightenment, by shutting her eyes and deducing that the world must simply not exist then.
Nevertheless, these few days spent apart did, however, seem to unclog her receptivity towards you. Finally, she begins to confine in you; share in her doubts and distress; deliver accounts of failed romances, as well as encouraging revelations.
You listen, express opinions, share accounts of you own, but are largely just plain happy to have your friend back.
Then again, when the time comes to board the train to Chiang Mai, capital of the northern territories, as previously discussed, it turns out that she has read about a charming temple out of the way, and would like to go there instead.
You argue that, as friends, one would expect more mutual consideration.
“Mira,”[1] she says, “just because I told you of my problems don’t mean that we are friends like before.”
“¿Pues, que somos? ¡¿Conocidos!?”[2] you exclaim.
“Pues si, hombre. Conocidos,”[3] is the wrong answer.
“Sorry,” you reply, “but I refuse to get downgraded this way.”
Then, you coldly shake her hand, hop on the train to Chiang Mai and never look back.
As she will not write you no more, nor will you write her. In time, you’ll be fighting urges to get back in touch; to confront or plead for the renewal of your friendship, but pride shall prevent you from doing so. Eventually, pride shall be replaced by acceptance and life will go on, as it always has, as it always will.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
[1] Look (Spanish)
[2] So, what are we? Acquaintances!? (Spanish)
[3] Well yes, man. Acquaintances (same)