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Alone among unsympathetic companions, I hold certain views and standards timidly, half ashamed to avow them and half doubtful if they can after all be right. Put me back among my Friends and in half an hour - in ten minutes - these same views and standards become once more indisputable. The opinion of this little circle, while I am in it, outweighs that of a thousand outsiders: as Friendship strengthens, it will do this even when my Friends are far away. For we all wish to be judged by our peers, by the men "after our own heart." Only they really know our mind and only they judge it by standards we fully acknowledge. Theirs is the praise we really covet and the blame we really dread. ↗
If the best of friends are those who reflect you, nothing helps your popularity like being secluded in a house of mirrors. ↗
These were the companions who justified my principles, who gave me the strength to continue against any foe, real or imagined. These were the companions who fought the helplessness, the rage, and frustration. These were the friends who gave me my life. ↗
I feel to that the gap between my new life in New York and the situation at home in Africa is stretching into a gulf, as Zimbabwe spirals downwards into a violent dictatorship. My head bulges with the effort to contain both worlds. When I am back in New York, Africa immediately seems fantastical – a wildly plumaged bird, as exotic as it is unlikely. Most of us struggle in life to maintain the illusion of control, but in Africa that illusion is almost impossible to maintain. I always have the sense there that there is no equilibrium, that everything perpetually teeters on the brink of some dramatic change, that society constantly stands poised for some spasm, some tsunami in which you can do nothing but hope to bob up to the surface and not be sucked out into a dark and hungry sea. The origin of my permanent sense of unease, my general foreboding, is probably the fact that I have lived through just such change, such a sudden and violent upending of value systems. In my part of Africa, death is never far away. With more Zimbabweans dying in their early thirties now, mortality has a seat at every table. The urgent, tugging winds themselves seem to whisper the message, memento mori, you too shall die. In Africa, you do not view death from the auditorium of life, as a spectator, but from the edge of the stage, waiting only for your cue. You feel perishable, temporary, transient. You feel mortal. Maybe that is why you seem to live more vividly in Africa. The drama of life there is amplified by its constant proximity to death. That’s what infuses it with tension. It is the essence of its tragedy too. People love harder there. Love is the way that life forgets that it is terminal. Love is life’s alibi in the face of death. For me, the illusion of control is much easier to maintain in England or America. In this temperate world, I feel more secure, as if change will only happen incrementally, in manageable, finely calibrated, bite-sized portions. There is a sense of continuity threaded through it all: the anchor of history, the tangible presence of antiquity, of buildings, of institutions. You live in the expectation of reaching old age. At least you used to. But on Tuesday, September 11, 2001, those two states of mind converge. Suddenly it feels like I am back in Africa, where things can be taken away from you at random, in a single violent stroke, as quick as the whip of a snake’s head. Where tumult is raised with an abruptness that is as breathtaking as the violence itself. ↗
Oh, look, the lights are so pretty,” I said dreamily, having just noticed them. I smiled at the way the lights were dancing overhead, pink and yellow and blue. I felt some pressure on my arm and thought, I should look over and see what’s going on, but then the thought was gone, sliding away like Jell-O off a hot car hood. “Fang?” “Yeah. I’m here.” I struggled to focus on him. “I’m so glad you’re here.” “Yeah, I got that.” “I don’t know what I’d do without you.” I peered up at him, trying to see past the too-bright lights. “You’d be fine,” he muttered. “No,” I said, suddenly struck by how unfine I would be. “I would be totally unfine. Totally.” It seemed very urgent that he understand this. Again I felt some tugging on my arm, and I really wondered what that was about. Was Ella’s mom going to start this procedure any time soon? “It’s okay. Just relax.” He sounded stiff and nervous. “Just...relax. Don’t try to talk.” “I don’t want my chip anymore,” I explained groggily, then frowned. “Actually, I never wanted that chip.” “Okay,” said Fang. “We’re taking it out.” “I just want you to hold my hand.” “I am holding your hand.” “Oh. I knew that.” I drifted off for a few minutes, barely aware of anything, but feeling Fang’s hand still in mine. “Do you have a La-Z-Boy somewhere?” I roused myself to ask, every word an effort. “Um, no,” said Ella’s voice, somewhere behind my head. “I think I would like a La-Z-Boy,” I mused, letting my eyes drift shut again. “Fang, don’t go anywhere.” “I won’t. I’m here.” “Okay. I need you here. Don’t leave me.” “I won’t.” “Fang, Fang, Fang,” I murmured, overwhelmed with emotion. “I love you. I love you sooo much.” I tried to hold out my arms to show how much, but I couldn’t move them. “Oh, jeez,” Fang said, sounding strangled. ↗
He rolled his eyes and took my hand. His hand was hard and calloused, tough with muscle and old scars. The night settled around us like a blanket. I could hear the water lapping against the dock. We were totally alone. “You’re . . . ,” he began, and I waited, heart throbbing in my throat. “Such a pain,” he concluded. “What?” I asked, just as his head swooped in and his mouth touched mine. I tried to speak, but one of Fang’s hands held the back of my head, and he kept his lips pressed against me, kissing me softly but with a Fanglike determination. Oh, jeez, I thought distractedly. Jeez, this is Fang, and me, and . . . Fang tilted his head to kiss me more deeply, and I felt totally lightheaded. Then I remembered to breathe through my nose, and the fog cleared a tiny bit. Somehow we were pressed together, Fang’s arms around me now, sliding under my wings, his hands flat against my back. It was incredible. I loved it. I loved him. It was a total disaster. Gasping, I pulled back. “I, uh—,” I began oh so coherently, and then I jumped up, almost knocking him over, and raced down the dock. I took off, flying fast, like a rocket. ↗
A girl would be lucky to have you, but not like this, Carmine. Not the way you treat people now. You're wasting your time, and it's not worth it. You need to find something that is. So, maybe your life isn’t boring, but it has to be unfulfilling. ↗
#girl #love #friendship
Max. God, but she was stubborn. And tough. And closed in. Closed off. Except when she was holding Angel, or ruffling the Gasman’s hair, or pushing something closer to Iggy’s hand so he could find it easily without knowing anyone had helped him. Or when she was trying to untangle Nudge’s mane of hair. Or-sometimes-when she was looking at Fang. He shifted on the hard ground, a half-dozen flashes of memory cycling through his brain. Max looking at him and laughing. Max leaping off a cliff, snapping out her wings, flying off, so incredibly powerful and graceful that it took his breath away. Max punching someone’s lights out, her face like stone. Max kissing that weiner Sam on Anne’s front porch. Gritting his teeth, Fang rolled onto his side. Max kissing him on the beach, after Ari had kicked Fang’s butt. Just now, her mouth soft under his. He wished she were here, if not next to him, then somewhere in the cave, so he could hear her breathing. It was going to be hard to sleep without that tonight. ↗
For me, there is a stigma attached to playing beautiful parts. They are often empty characters whom the action happens around. I'm more drawn to characters with a complex internal life, who have a burning frustration underneath that keeps them going. ↗
The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surprising result will follow. If in your working hours you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters. You will be one of the sound craftsmen, and other sound craftsmen will know it. This group of craftsmen will by no means coincide with the Inner Ring or the Important People or the People in the Know. It will not shape that professional policy or work up that professional influence which fights for the profession as a whole against the public: nor will it lead to those periodic scandals and crises which the Inner Ring produces. But it will do those things which that profession exists to do and will in the long run be responsible for all the respect which that profession in fact enjoys and which the speeches and advertisements cannot maintain. And if in your spare time you consort simply with the people you like, you will again find that you have come unawares to a real inside: that you are indeed snug and safe at the center of something which, seen from without, would look exactly like an Inner Ring. But the difference is that its secrecy is accidental, and its exclusiveness a by-product, and no one was led thither by the lure of the esoteric: for it is only four or five people who like one another meeting to do things that they like. This is friendship. Aristotle placed it among the virtues. It causes perhaps half of all the happiness in the world, and no Inner Ring can ever have it. ↗
