DON'T ENCOURAGE HIM

A few years before my mother died, she surprised me by saying she admired and envied me for never losing a friend.  I can’t remember whether that was ever true or was true then.  It certainly isn’t true now. I suspect she was regretting sad aspects of her own life and magnifying them.  Her only other significant praise was telling me I held the importance of my marriage in proper relation to other family obligations, i.e., it was paramount; everything else be damned.

By now, I've lost countless friends.  It’s really disturbing.  The final few,  who must have been important because they lasted longest/latest, were all utter, unexpected, unmitigated disasters.  In each case but one, I tried to salvage something from the wreckage, but was unsuccessful.  Cut to the chase, I guess they weren't friends anyway.  I wish I had the time back;  it was substantial.  The last fracture was the oddest, but so-called social media is like that; communication barriers seem to be broken down, but no real connection ever is established.  License divorced from responsibility.  Over an extended period,  I was in daily virtual touch  with someone who was searching for an online claque to admire and praise him.  Looking back, our relationship reminds me of how my wife who worked with music celebrities for a living advised junior publicists about the divided qualities of “artist contact.”  Too often after meeting or working with someone you think you admire, you are never able to enjoy their art again.  So it goes.  

They say that personal criticism of others tends really to be a form of identification and self-criticism.  I kind of agree with that.  In that case, my last erstwhile friend thinks he has a lot in common with Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler.  That’s funny and tragic.  

The Secret -- Slapp Happy (from Casablanca Moon) (Link)

TELLS HOW I BECAME ACQUAINTED WITH MY WIFE

  
   For some time the girl remained where he had left her, looking out past the islet and over the bright sea. Then with a start, as one who throws off preoccupation and puts energy again upon its mettle, she broke into a rapid and decisive walk. She also was much incensed by what had passed. She had forgotten where she was. And I beheld her walk straight into the borders of the quicksand where it is most abrupt and dangerous. Two or three steps farther and her life would have been in serious jeopardy, when I slid down the face of the sand hill, which is there precipitous, and, running halfway forward, called to her to stop.

  She did so, and turned round. There was not a tremor of fear in her behavior, and she marched directly up to me like a queen. I was barefoot, and clad like a common sailor, save for an Egyptian scarf round my waist; and she probably took me at first for some one from the fisher village, straying after bait. As for her, when I thus saw her face to face, her eyes set steadily and imperiously upon mine, I was filled with admiration and astonishment, and thought her even more beautiful than I had looked to find her. Nor could I think enough of one who, acting with so much boldness, yet preserved a maidenly air that was both quaint and engaging; for my wife kept an old-fashioned precision of manner through all her admirable life--an excellent thing in woman, since it sets another value on her sweet familiarities.

   "What does this mean?" she asked.



 "You were walking," I told her, "directly into Graden Floe."



Slapp Happy: A Little Something (Link) and The Secret (Link)
 


Excerpt:  Robert Louis Stevenson,  “The Pavilion On The Links,” first published in Cornhill Magazine 42-43, London (Sept-Oct 1880).