My little friends… Though missing here is the doe with her 2 bambis and one adopted fawn that I have seen early this September. I see the foursome early morning and they greet me by not running away. They just stare. Just like these guys. They don’t care. They feel safe.
Ah…my little friends… well… I am evaluating what the terms “friendship” and “friends” truly mean. I have had joys and disappointments with friends throughout my life, but it has only been recently, these last couple of years or so, when I have seriously pondered about what being a friend is all about.
And, like I have always said to my kids, ad nauseum, there’s nothing new under the sun and all clichés and stereotypes have a basis in truth. So, fairweather friends? Yes, I’ve known them all.
However, for the first time in my life I am faced with a conundrum: “friends” who chose betrayal rather than truth. And the perennial question is: Why? Why lie? Why betray? I will never know the truth. My biggest shock: “friends” I have known for half a century have been weak, feeble and ugly. “Acquaintances” of recent years have been solid, stolid and strong. Go figure! Another lesson to write about to my grandkids.
For some reason, my little friends remind me of guanacos!
I have journaled much about the role of friends, especially as it involves those “old old” friends that disappoint to the core. I am learning that the sting of disappointment is like being stuck with porcupine quills.
The barbed tip hurts, and removing by yanking on the quill is painful. However, like everything else in life, you begin to evaluate how to ease the pain of extrication. If I had only known when Milly got these quills what I do now, she would not have suffered so much. Tip: you first have to cut them in half so that they go limp, the fish-hook tip relaxes, and you can pull them out softly and with reduced pain because the quills become flaccid and pliable!
I am spending much time with good friends. Some I have known for a few months. Others, for a couple of decades. And some, for a few weeks. I value their support, compassion, and their reaching out when you least expect it. Most of all, I cherish the laughter we share together. A hearty good laugh is a balm for the soul.
Recently, I heard from friends from my youth. They brought back a torrent of emotions, for they helped me remember some of the “good old days” of yore, when we were studying and working and carefree. How lucky can one be?
I am blessed.
The Arrow And The Song
Long, long afterward, in an oak I found the arrow, still unbroke; And the song, from beginning to end, I found again in the heart of a friend.
So, after the moon walked the night in her silvery shoon, I caught her last sliver of shine on a gloriously crisp Maine sunrise. I tried to capture the beauty, but the phone did not fulfill its promise. Pretty, yes, but not glorious as I witnessed it. I thought as I stared, how can one be sad peering at such majestic color and scene? And so early in the morning? I am in good company, staring at the moon, with ghost crabs and singing frogs.
Working on a concept paper to help a friend, I had been thinking about what constitutes a “drag” in the business world, as you want to speed things up in order to accomplish as much as you can in the shortest time available. Sometimes you need to do the right thing and get rid of excess baggage, so to speak, whether it is product or humans. As to the latter, it can be quite devastating to contemplate the process. I’ve had my share of having to tell employees that their end date had arrived, and, when the individual was decent and hard working, it was horrible to let go. That’s one of the reasons I opted not to pursue management. As a lawyer, I liked the solitude of research and writing and not the upheaval of directing hiring and firing. It is so very true in one’s personal life as well.
Upon reflection, yesterday morning, I realized that not only am I entering the “death cleanup” stage in my life, trying to sever the balls and chains that tie me to “things” – in itself a huge “drag”- but I am discarding “dead wood” and all that constitutes what I finally see as useless or dangerous detritus. Sometimes, it takes an ugly trauma to accelerate this process. Other times, it just happens.
At the end of the day, I don’t need nor want dead wood, be it memories or people that draw me down to complacency or ennui or despair. More importantly, it is the awareness that some of my dead wood are the so-called “friends” I thought I had, that either were Judas goats and very treacherous, or complete idiots that I put up with because of circumstances of life. I don’t need dead wood, rotten apples belong in composts, and weak idiots are just a drag. It has taken me a long time to finally reach this conclusion, and it is liberating. My only regret is not having figured this out sooner. But then, wisdom sometimes is slow to arrive. Yet, it’s better late than never.
It’s amazing how the above musings are all thanks to staring at the silvery light of the sliver of moon as I savored a serene sunrise and thought of Walter de la Mare!
Silver
Slowly, silently, now the moon Walks the night in her silver shoon; This way, and that, she peers, and sees Silver fruit upon silver trees; One by one the casements catch Her beams beneath the silvery thatch; Couched in his kennel, like a log, With paws of silver sleeps the dog; From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep Of doves in a silver-feathered sleep; A harvest mouse goes scampering by, With silver claws and a silver eye; And moveless fish in the water gleam, By silver reeds in a silver stream.
One of the salient bilingual refrains I recall hearing growing up was how it takes one bad apple to spoil the bushel or “una manzana podrida pudre a las demás”. I hated the connotation because it was always used in reference to that “one friend” who could lead everyone astray, and you just had to get rid of that “friend”.
At the time, I resented my teachers, grandparents, parents, priests, nuns all pointing out to the importance of dumping that “rotten apple”, because sometimes fingers were pointed towards someone I knew and liked. And, of course, I knew better!
Lately, though, I have been engaging in retrospection trying to understand why some people whom one considers friends – who one might have spent time sharing a meal, a warm home, indulging in “old stories” and caring about “old woes”, the ails and ailments and deaths of other friends and children – can perversely aid and abet lies and treacherous behavior, and actually eagerly encourage the ruination of entire families of friends, acquaintances, colleagues, etc., just because. There seems to be a sadistic pleasure in this indulgence…and no compassion for any one of the victims.
Of course, this treachery is as old as the Bible and literature is chock full of these unsavory characters. So, as I am indulging in research for a narrative about this despicable behavior, lo and behold, I discovered a new thing: the “Judas goat”! I had never heard of it.
A Judas goat is raised with the sheep so that it will eventually gain their trust and when the time comes the Judas goat will lead the sheep to the slaughterhouse itself.
So now I need to study this phenomenon more, because I realize that “friends” who act in such a dishonest way, are truly Judas goats who operate because of their dark and rotten ulterior motives, whether they dislike the person/persons they are betraying, or whether they have misbehaved and need to cover their own tracks…that is, tit-for-tat.
However, the irony of ironies is that the Judas goat’s service is finite, and eventually it exhausts its usefulness. And then? Ah, their own masters end up sending them off to their miserable end.
I feel sorry for the Judas goat. After all, it is just a goat that has been trained to fulfill an animal husbandry purpose. However, the human Judas goat, well…now that is another story!
He greets me and lets me swat away at the pesky flies and caress his head. He is thrilled if I give him a treat. Talking about caresses…if he were a human or a dog, he could lie next to me and I would caress his back to alleviate the anxiety or insomnia he might feel in his dreams.
He is a beauty, and a better friend than many whom I have known for half a century. I am lucky! Between my fox and my horse, how could I feel sad? He brings back memories of riding bare back, something I loved doing in my old neck of the woods in Argentina. Nah, I would never dream of doing it today. It would end in a funny tale of destruction. However, one can dream, right?
One of the things I used to try to inculcate in my children was the importance of never lying, because once one is categorized as a liar, the link of trust is broken, and it really can’t be repaired. The worst thing that can happen to a person is to be seen as a liar, because their word will be forever doubted, even when they speak the truth (Peter and the Wolf comes to mind).
Lately, I keep returning to a conundrum of my making, and this is how my mind works: why would I lie, not to protect myself or hide my shame, but rather, to protect someone else’s misdeed, when I know full well that there is misconduct involved? There’s the rub that led me to a vortex of etymological discovery and legal peregrination.
The Greek word “diaballein” means “to slander, attack, cast apart”. “Dia” meaning “across, through” and “ballein” meaning “to throw”. It literally means “to throw across, to scatter” (e.g., families get scattered, communities get divided). It is the source of another Greek word “diavolos” , which is the provenance of the term we all know, “the devil”.
Now this led me to discover the origin of that other name for devil, “ho sataunus”, which is also Greek and based on the Hebrew word that means “The Accuser”, and is the origin of the name Satan.
A philosopher I read somewhere even stated that in today’s world, The Accuser’s role could be seen as that of a Prosecuting Attorney, whose job is to blame and blame the accused: he/she did it! (Poor lawyers, they never get a break!).
We mere mortals engage in accusations all the time when we gossip, point the finger, play the shame and blame game, and/or destroy someone’s character. How many times are we oblivious to carelessly wounding others by saying or implying an untruth that may wreck their family life, their reputation and character, all done through a lie?
At the end of the day, the Bible calls the devil the father of lies… and for good reason.
I leave it to better writers than me to share my conclusions through their thoughts on lies and lying:
A liar will not be believed, even when he speaks the truth. (Aesop)
No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar. (Abraham Lincoln)
You can always lie to others and hide your actions from them… but you can not fool yourself. (Also A. Lincoln).
A little lie is like a little pregnancy; it doesn’t take long before everyone knows. (C.S. Lewis)
A truth can walk naked…but a lie always needs to be dressed. (Khalil Gibran)
Dum Spiro Spero 