This may be the first, but certainly won't be the last time, I mention this subject. But while
I was thinking about the next Blog topic, I was running through my Facebook posts over the last fiscal year, and I suddenly experienced one of those "authentic moments". Those are the rather unexpected occasions when even if you know something in the classic sense, at some point the full realization washes over you with the strength of an Alaskan waterfall; headlight-bright in your eyes, and there isn't a damn thing you can do to shield yourself. And that's the point: not to file the memo away with a secretary's casual efficiency. You seize it, and tear open the envelope; cut your fingers on the thin white borders.
And isn't that where life begins: when the bite goes deep, and all your nerves are shooting fireworks?
Tonight I had the sensory overload of fully realizing I have a Friends List. It had always seemed like such a mundane thing: common as a can of tuna. But damn, it's really not.
My Friends List is a history lesson: from life in a San Dimas kindergarten to the lunch tables occupied by some of the finest punks, goths and band geeks Southern California has to offer. And on to college confidants, wild lovers, 2 a.m. soulmates and angelic secret keepers. Then the second families: strangers once, but somewhere in the wage slavery battlefields, we found one-another to be not so strange, not so avoidable. And up through the stories: literal, figurative and fantasy: building memories and finding memories and wishing the clock would stop making such a goddamn 6 a.m. fuss.
My Friends List is quite the mirror: Jackson Pollock-level eccentric. It's people who know more about me than I care to admit, right alongside some who I'm deeply thankful that I am getting to know. It's drinking buddies, political debate partners, playground meme traders; older, younger, teachers, students.
But what drenches my heart with liquid cinnamon is that despite all my shortcomings; my alley-bum stumbling through this life, holding my pants up with one hand, pointing self-righteous fingers with the other, is that some people would pick me up from the black puddles, brace me over the broken cobblestone... and slap me out of a love that can only be read in hero novels. That they would find me warm clothes and dress me with comforting words. And that I would do the same, in less than a heartbeat.
May your list be as authentic; as worthy of reflection.
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