If friendship or love were as easy as two balloons sailing through life, untethered.
There ought to be a carnival, a sky full of colored balloons drifting on the wind with tags on them saying goodbye…goodbye… crossing the Golden Gate and on around the world on the trade winds of friendship.
I wish I’d moved more slowly, taken more time to arrive at where friendship left off. I wish I had danced and dined more, learned the meaning of glances, or taken note how quickly time was passing.
Your warmth and humor always had me feeling a little tipsy, light-hearted, as if I’d eaten a perfectly ripe tomato, and its color had entered my cheeks.
There are a lot of things I don’t yet know or yet understand, and I’m still trying to write about them; not as a writer does, looking for an explanation, but as a man wishing he’d known more about love than he does.
Memories always return, broken, splintered, like shards of affection returning from another universe after being flung far off into space.
Fragments still survive, coming back at me speaking of warmth, or friendship, or what goes with what. Of course, I alone know the truth, all the things I leave out, cast aside on a Sunday, recalled on a Monday as I hurtle into Tuesday…exhausted.
I think balloons taught me about life. The beauty of balloons is in their flying free, side by side, maybe, but untethered. The wind caressing them along their journey. I’ve never felt a need to demonstrate courage, or reason to do something right. I’m not perfect, not close. My stories of friendship are not a definitive roadmap, but rather a journey into the next life…or Wednesday.
Well I don't equate these lines of your personal philosophy with any story (except your own?), I find them quite charming and revealing. I especially like the third line in your line of thinking while writing it.
I do sense a sense of regret. I guess we all have regrets, but sensors nothing we can do about them, it's probably better to look forward to what we can do better in the future.
There's awe and beauty in not understanding everything. Mystery...if relationships were so easy, they'd be boring. You allude to this when you state your stories of friendship are not a definitive roadmap, but a journey.
Timeless wisdom and advice on the art of living for today’s young and old: The art of thinking, the art of loving, the art of working, the art of leadership, the art of growing old.
A new translation by Sergio E. Serrano of this inspirationa
