"Some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's goint to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity!"
That's the text message my room mate unexpectedly sent me one morning. Groggy from sleep and battling an imminent hangover, I managed to key in a few poetics of my own. Unable to fall back to sleep, wicked sandman has left me to the daylight yet again, I lie in bed for a while trying to orient myself to the day at hand. I linger on the subject of friendship and dally. I see the concept in slow motion, like the contained colors suspended and gracefully undulating in a lava lamp ...I admit shamelessly that I have only a few people I can call my friends. But I keep them close. How good things are do not lie on quantity anyway but the veracity of the relationship itself.
My roommate and I are both Libras. Which is probably why we either talk our our throats dry or we never speak a word at all during our 'chance' encounters. Well alright, not really chance encouters per se' but chance encounters in the sense that they are the encounters that my roommate and I wish to galvanize. She and I always have a protocol (as to the origin of the protocol, I have no clue). And handshaking of sorts to verify if one wishes to engage in an encounter. An on-the-fly hello, a wordless offer of fridge crumbs and colas. It is in these few seconds where the beauty of our friendship lie. For these few moments are devoid of expectation and devoid of malice. How the invitation is met has no merit in our friendship. Whether it be met with welcome, a polite decline or even an occasional cold shoulder, it never mattered. Warm welcomes are usually followed by verbal spars, heated arguments and eventually sheepish grins. At the end of it all, it boils down to respect. Enough to say your end of the continuum and enough not to push it. Enough to listen and consider. Enough to consider otherwise.
During times of disinterest for interaction, the encounter is patiently delayed without a trace of resentment. OK, perhaps a split second grudge but nothing more. Privacy is utmost and we never pry unless beckoned. Regardless of the reception, the essence of our ineffable relationship endures. I always reckoned that there is more to friendship than words...that people can communicate just as articulately and eloquently with silence. That action has as many tones, diction and idioms as utterances. And we have both proven that being taciturn from disposition has its values... as one who is innately taciturn may now and then make an effort at sensible, substantial conversation - a relief and a luxury in a world filled with spindoctors.
There is another thing that I find wonderfully unsual and cordial with our relationship. 'Delicious ambiguity' as she so eloquently put it. The strap from our tether unwinds. We have each other without staking any real claim. For we are accountable to each other only to the extent that we want to be. Give and take without the complexities and guilt. NO! Purely giving and taking to one's discretion - as one's objective intellect sees fit, a process borne not in disregard to morality but a reference to the innate benevolence (good and evil is a pregnant idea that has its entrapments to the unwary) one feels once affection is established. A certain loyalty that is won only by the attraction one feels when one sees the real person. An attraction that comes after seeing the vulnerability of someone and the decision not to dominate or malign. Having without owning.
Kudos to Cathy! A trusted confidant and friend. For seeing past our tantrums and mood swings. For seeing beyond my defenses and the giving me the grace of privacy without my asking. Here's to the bliss of anticipating the uncertain. Here's to more verbal spars and glib quips that provide relief to the toils of day. Here's to more dialogues and further contemplation on the woes of life that make it worth living. You always knew that I was the face that drowns day with the hope of night. ^_^