5.14.2004

Friday Roundup

    A few things I forgot to mention from that last day of the Miami trip:
* the couple in front of us were verbally abusive of the F/A because she'd run out of Diet Coke (actually, all diet soda) before she made her way to their row when finally offering beverages. The female half of the couple actually cried over the issue.
* after sitting in the plane for 40 or so minutes on the runway, we began moving. A small cheer went up. It quieted and finally ceased when it became clear that we were simply taxiing - to another runway. They moved us across the airport. BNA is laid out like a sunflower and we moved literally from the top to the bottom by land. After a while it seemed like we were going to drive to Chicago in that tiny little plane.
* very shortly before we landed in Chicago, the F/A broadcast gate numbers of connecting flights, informing those who'd missed theirs that other arrangements had been made. There was a significant pause. "Those of you who were going to connect to the British Airways flight to London Heathrow, please see a gate attendant." The cranky, crying couple became profusely agitated at that point. Ha! I didn't feel the least bit sorry for them. I think that if one's attitude is that poor about something as inconsequential as beverage service on what's basically a commuter flight, one deserves to lose overseas connections.     

    Last evening I crafted a long response to someone who's sent several email messages to me recently without reply. That's certainly a mark of a good friend. In one of his messages he referred ironically to himself attempting to reform his cynical outlook, attempting to affect (as he put it) "an attitude of gratitude", although he admitted that the triteness of the phrase made him feel like the lowest-rent Jesse Jackson. Now, this friend is even more cynical than I am, so his reformation is nothing short of startling. And it - among several other things that've arisen in the past few days - spurred me to think about gratitude. Robert wrote a lovely, thought-provoking post yesterday about online friendship and what it's come to mean to him. Although I wanted to leave a comment, there were too many disparate thoughts rushing through my head to make sense of any one of them. Comment boxes seem to require something pithy and clear, not a mishmash of sentiment. I had a very long, very intense conversation with a friend last night about the vast difference between humility and self-deprecation, and why it's not admirable to beat oneself up just because it's funny or easy or the first defense.
    My point? Gratitude. I've written in the past that my friends mean a lot to me. I've never clarified that, really, and now that I've gained some more insight into my own standard viewpoint, I want to try.
    One huge reason why the people I consider friends matter to me is that they contribute to my feelings of community and support. I don't mean physical community, because most of these people are far apart geographically, but intellectually, aesthetically and emotionally. I love that sense of acceptance when I've read a book, that there's someone I can tell about it who will listen and be interested and who might even read it based solely on my suggestion. And that there are people who care enough to tell what they've read, and whose opinions I trust and who won't steer me wrong in return. It goes the same way for music and movies. And politics and religion, although we don't talk about that very much (with one recent exception). My use of the word "support" is in the emotional sense - there's someone with whom I can connect if I choose to do so, but there is also the mature understanding that we're all adults with our own lives, so if we're not immediately accessible, it's not criminal or personal.
    When I respond with gratitude, I sometimes overdo it. I hadn't realized that until last night. I don't mean to imply that I'd be nothing without your friendship, or that I have nothing without it, or that you're my lifeline. Connections are immeasurably valuable and pleasurable but each of us is, in the end, responsible for ourselves only. What I do mean is that some of these relationships are transcendent - they're beyond what I've had before, and I appreciate that. It took me a long time to grow up; maybe it's still in process. And I haven't always been cognizant of what I've had until I lost some things - or people. Once I realized that it was necessary to consciously express my gratitude, it became increasingly easy to do so - to the point that it began to sound less than sincere. Now that I've become aware, I'll try to remember that and not go so far.
    That wasn't very coherent. Hope it made sense and that its meaning is accepted.
    In conclusion, I offer today's poem. This is something I'm shooting for doing at least once a week, a nod to Orvstuff. This is, as was the last, from Louise Glück. Called "Palais Des Arts", it is part of 'Descending Figure' in the First Four Books of Poems.

Love long dormant showing itself:
the large expected gods
caged really, the columns
sitting on the lawns, as though perfection
were not timeless but stationary--that
is the comedy, she thinks,
that they are paralyzed. Or like the matching swans,
insular, circling the pond: restraint so passionate
implies possession. They hardly speak.
On the other bank, a small boy throws bits of bread
into the water. The reflected monument
is stirred, briefly, stricken with light--
She can't touch his arm in innocence again.
They have to give that up and begin
as male and female, thrust and ache.

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