the finer line

Sometimes our friends commodify themselves.  They become, like defective products that must be returned, disappointments threaded into the  fabric of our dutiful lives. This shouldn’t be the case, but this is far from Utopia and we are, more each year, becoming the lame, black sheep of the universe. Our relationships now glide over the surface of things, as superficial as reality T.V. Even human emotion and compassion has been commercialized.

It wasn’t this way when we were younger, no doubt. The idealism of our youth bound us to each other and preserved a sense of loyalty that has disintegrated with age. We became, more and more, figures that must fit into the plaster casts of what we think we’re supposed to be. No more time for depth.  Certainly no time for sober, afternoon contemplation with one another.  No time for the true idea of friendship.

The internal, slow panic that comes with the aging process has tricked us into living with less meaning and making false meaning out of simple pleasures. The angles we believe we’ve achieved are fleeting moments of half thought – stillborn ideas. They pay us no mind.

When the child returns, we’ll be too old to enjoy each other like we once did.  Friends will have expired or will have gone on to other reaches. Maybe one will show up one day to enjoy the afternoon light and talk with truth about the simplest things.