[Image: “Cousins,” by John E. Simpson. (Photo shared here under a Creative Commons License; for more information, see this page at RAMH.)]

From whiskey river:

There is a twilight zone in our own hearts that we ourselves cannot see. Even when we know quite a lot about ourselves—our gifts and weaknesses, our ambitions and aspirations, our motives and drives—large parts of ourselves remain in the shadow of consciousness.

This is a very good thing. We always will remain partially hidden to ourselves. Other people, especially those who love us, can often see our twilight zones better than we ourselves can. The way we are seen and understood by others is different from the way we see and understand ourselves. We will never fully know the significance of our presence in the lives of our friends. That’s a grace, a grace that calls us not only to humility but also to a deep trust in those who love us. It is in the twilight zones of our hearts where true friendships are born.

(Henri Nouwen [source])

Not from whiskey river:

The Soul Selects Her Own Society

The Soul selects her own Society —
Then — shuts the Door —
To her divine Majority —
Present no more —

Unmoved — she notes the Chariots — pausing —
At her low Gate —
Unmoved — an Emperor be kneeling
Upon her Mat —

I’ve known her — from an ample nation —
Choose One —
Then — close the Valves of her attention —
Like Stone —

(Emily Dickinson [source])

…and:

Once we were so few we fit intimately into the life of extended families. As our numbers swelled, you would think we would feel an even greater sense of belonging, of belonging everywhere to everyone. But there are so many of us, more than we can ever know in a lifetime—or even imagine as individuals—that we often feel just the opposite: as if we belong nowhere to no one. We can move among multitudes, and feel isolated and alone. We live unique, private lives of hope and self-interest. We also live polite, cooperative lives of teamwork and negotiation. When our population was low, that meant cooperating on a hunt or ceremony or marriage, or perhaps the exchange of goods. We knew the people who owed us, and those to whom we were indebted. We knew our friends and allies on sight—they often revealed talents and tempers in the daily dramas of the community. We knew whom to trust in a crisis, where to go for solace. Today there are so many of us that we forge alliances with people we will never meet, whose names we don’t even know—with banks, insurance companies, sprawling corporations, governments, churches, armed forces. We belong to organizations more virtuous and trustworthy than any of their members are as individuals. We belong to our families as we always did, to kith and kin, but we also belong electronically, telephonically, statistically, generationally, anonymously to people far from us.

We are masons, blacksmiths, teachers, lawyers. We have invented machines in which we fly, submersibles to patrol the secret recesses of the oceans. We have polished the marble of our cities, and also filled them with decay. We have homesteaded the night with electric lights, turning it into a dazzling country. We have learned sin and shame, new words for hate, novel forms of mischief and deep play. We perform towering feats of altruism. Little of it was planned. It simply happened, child by child, loved one by loved one, piece by piece, over the great caravan of human history.

(Diane Ackerman [source])

In high school, I met, befriended, and eventually fell in love with a girl who was utterly outside my league in terms of how many people she knew and was friends with, her likely impact on our school and society at large, and — it must be said — her romantic confusions and entanglements. We eventually attended and graduated from the same college, and stayed in touch for the next decade or so, through one marriage (or another) to other people, and although we never had a “romantic” relationship, we certainly talked about the prospect occasionally. It just never got off the ground.

Anyway, she at some point gave me a book, Stories and Satires — a selection of the stories of Sholom Aleichem. I have no idea how or why she chose that book; it had no obvious connection to anything going on in our lives. I probably read and enjoyed a few of the tales but don’t remember much about them. Frustratingly, though, I remember — but only almost — the inscription she’d added to the title page. It purported to be a quotation from Thomas More, I think — Thomas Somebody, anyhow — but I’ve never been able to trace or recreate it exactly.

But it went something like this, in words which don’t sound to me much like someone of More’s ilk:

We had reached that stage of Anglo-Saxon regard when two people will not look each other in the eye, for fear of revealing how very fond of each other they are.

It kills me that I can’t remember it, and it kills me that I can’t recreate the true sense of the passage (let alone its impact on me), even in other words. My copy of the book, needless to say, is long gone, and while I can certainly buy a new copy, it won’t contain that inscription. (I’m afraid I’m not interested in it otherwise.) My friend — as I learned from a mutual acquaintance — died over 20 years ago, so even that avenue of research is now closed off…

With those exact words or not, I did — do still — love the mystery of friendship which the quotation danced around. Even (maybe especially!) if we never exchange explicit “I love you” declarations, I know and my friends know what lies beneath the surface of our joshing, our sharing of intimate memories and fears, and our simple silence in one another’s presence. I don’t make friends easily — am decidedly not at all the “Hail, fellow, well met!” sort. But the deep understanding that someone is a friend, no matter how often we’re geographically in the same place: I think I may treasure that as much as any other life experience.