……over the edge

I recently telephoned an old friend to ask if the family still lived at the same address, so I could send a letter and ask about email, of course. Now there will be emailing of photos as a daughter has dragged my friend into this century. I have related to this person so well since school in the ’70s for  one simple reason, we have not changed ‘inside’.

There are loads of expressions used to attempt to express this sort of intimate yet platonic relationship but none do it justice. Free spirits? someone has just said over my shoulder and typically done a runner. The intimacy of this writing now destroyed, can I explain? I am still a floundering 16 year old insistent that I accept all new things with wonder and an open mind. A  fountain  of ideas, keeps flowing everyday without having to gear up, concentrate, it just keeps coming. Creativity concerning images foremost but without any qualification I will question architectural shapes, engineering feats and keep wondering, "why didn’t they do it this way"?

This is why I have written, yes I actually used a pen on nice hand laid paper no less, to my friend, because things are changing as my doctor said they would – no, not an obvious statement for a locum GP. The medication I take to restrict the seizures, full or partial is working in a different way because my metabolism is slowing down in my fiftieth year. So I want to do things but knees, joints protest as everyone’s do but most of all, the med’s are restricting activity. They are knocking me out, more prolifically than ever before and while on some lateral adventure, I am literally dropping off, dropping things, (always breakable of course), drowning, staining and not sleeping at the right times….. and while all that is going on I am wondering wether a lattice of drilled holes will be more decorative for a box surround for the electric fuse board, made out of the original support for a coffee table I once made for myself!

The strange thing about I and my friend’s lives; is That they have been totally different. I suppose you could say the cards fell differently, different backgrounds, families, friends, but as 17 year olds we recognised something about each other. Something was the same. The very potent desire to stay young, later recognised as staying as we were, still hungry for the world each day despite the dross, the repetition we all have to wade through.

still hungry for the intimacy this also brings, but of course having to be at arms length because of relationships. Which has never been a problem because I left, She returned, after college. I don’t bother my friend too often. A Christmas card is a normal years communication every three or four years I write, this time I have just found and framed in collage, a wonderful letter she once sent me, about friendship.

One could ask how could there possibly be any friendship if you live 200 miles apart and have virtually no interaction, But on the phone there is still that freshness of recognition, perhaps because you are someone unexpected, to lift the receiver for? But the light, it is still there, our past, our linkage, the simplicity of just wanting to stay the same, not planed and varnished, perhaps even if marked and bent, inside still fresh and young.

for C