writing about friendship

More than two years ago, when I was doing my "advanced writing" independent study with Jim, he offered me rather simple but hilarious advice: Don't write about God, love, or loss. And if you must, keep it in your journal for a few years, come back and look at it then and decide whether there's anything fresh there.

Haha, Jim, you were right as far as craft goes, too much has already been written about all that, and too much of it is cliched. But the fact is that, for me, writing about love and loss (God, not so much!) is the only way I know how to deal with either. So although the writing may be cheesy and cliched, the emotion is real; the piece may not be publication-worthy, but it might still be the most important thing I could write (like when I wrote about Nana's death and could share that poetry with Mom and masi... could anything have been more important than celebrating his life, together with the family, through my own life?).

On the same note, here I go about love. Or, more specifically, friendship (which is, after all, a kind of love). For many years now, and increasingly so each day, friendship has become one of the most important things in my life. I'm right now recovering from a hard few weeks, which i will not detail here, but which have really made me once again appreciate just how lucky i am to have the kinds of friends i have. I have also often been annoyed by how little is written about friendship as compared to how much is written about love.

So here is a first draft of a piece about friendship, dedicated of course to all of you, but written specifically to my closest friend of 8 years, who has seen me through madness i cannot recount and somehow (I don't think either of us knows how!) pulled me through... especially in this last week, that friendship has worked magic in my life. To my writerly friends, please don't bother with critique, because this is a draft and needs loads and loads of work before it is a poem. But the emotion i want to convey is in the now and can't wait for the editing process!

And you, I know you will be embarrassed to death by this, but what the heck, you're learning to deal with me, aren't you? ;)

The journey from "I know"
to "I admit to not knowing,"
from silent understanding
to the silence that says
I do not, cannot, understand,
but I am there for you anyway.

The journey from that first conversation,
you begging me to put down the phone
because 5 minutes was more than you could talk.
The journey to the most recent one,
3 hours and counting, and you didn't tire
(I never tire of talking anyway).

The journeys across time and space
and worlds that weren't big enough
to accommodate us both. And
the journey to stretch the universe,
despite the detours and the landslides
and the milestones that lied.

Simone Weil wrote "friendship is not
to be sought, not to be dreamed, not
to be desired; it is to be exercised (it
is a virtue)." And Marie Howe insists
"Love is action."

Simone also wrote that friendship
is "a miracle... And the miracle
consists simply in the fact
that it exists ."

I do not know enough
to contest, so i will believe
my poet friends, and let
this action, this friendship,
hang over me like a miracle
that
simply
exists.