I'm keeping things pretty simple this week... I've been thinking about friends, friendship and love and how important they all are... but before I begin I just want to segway to one of my favorite movies of all time... "The Last Of Sheila" a screenplay brilliantly written by Stephen Sondheim and Anthony Perkins (yes that Anthony Perkins) directed by Herbert Ross and acted magnificently by (in alphabetical order) Richard Benjamin, Dyan Cannon, James Coburn, Joan Hackett. James Mason, Ian McShane and Raquel Welch... the first time I saw it I had to immediately see it again because it was so well written and cleverly plotted I had to see the twists and turns in the script again... we have it on DVD and watch it again at least once a year as I never tire of it... I won't give anything away but one of the clues is in the title of the movie.
The Last Of Sheila (click on link to view trailer)
The closing credits of the movie is Bette Midler singing "Friends" which was the first time I ever heard the song in 1973 but it's one of those that pops into my head at certain times and I sing it to myself or in the shower...
I don't have many regrets in life but one of them is I wish I had gone to Woodstock but that summer was a turning point in my life in so many other ways perhaps everything happened the way it was supposed to... Since that time there have been many friends in and out of my life and since 1969 a few of them have endured the test of time, several others died and some of us just slipped away from each other and a hand full of us just found it too much of a pain in the ass to continue trying to forge a friendship.
One of the readers here sent me an e-mail last year telling me I spent too much time looking back instead of forward and I responded that It's difficult to move forward without sometimes looking back because we gain important insight revisiting certain landscapes from the past not only in how the world has changed but how we have grown, evolved and most importantly what we have learned... you can sometimes gain new perspective about yourself and the world and even use it as a yardstick for the future; and perhaps most importantly the meaning of the past can change when you juxtapose the past with the present and put the new pieces gained from the renewed insight or perspective into place for tomorrow... Sometimes the past is painful but it's important to work through the pain or sadness and move on; the only time I advise letting the past rest permanently is if revisiting is in any way demoralizing or destructive to your soul... by that I mean you use the past as a crutch or simply accept emotional paralysis.
So some of my thoughts on love and friendship are...
It's good to have friends who you know well enough and care enough about that they can make you cry and sometimes at almost the same time can make you laugh.
Wherever you are in the world what you and your friends are to each other is the fabric and subtext of your life and make it what it is.
A good friend will bring out all the good qualities in you and recognize some good qualities that you may not even know you have... and an acquaintance (especially an annoying one) will often bring your worst qualities and emotions to the surface.
There is a very big middle ground between a friendship and an acquaintance full of infinite possibilities that will either stand the test of time or not.
When a love affair ends we can sometimes come to some sort of understanding of what went wrong and the issues involved... but when true friends part there is a void and cold emptiness that is impossible to fill and and defies reason or explanation.
With our friends we carry suitcases of memories of each other and while many people have come into my life and gone out of it... I still think about the person who taught me how to drive a stick shift and all of the others that we somehow we managed to bring out the best in each other the most... I'm sorry for the friends I've lost but each of them have added a new dimension to my life and how to be a friend and I'm grateful for the new friends in what we have found in each other... finding true friends later in life is a priceless gift.
And finally... You can't find true love... you can only try to hide from it... The truth is love finds you when you are ready to handle it... and... the road to the truth is always under construction.
See you next week... We are going to take a quick look across the pond and visit London.
