Listening to:

I wrote an essay on a T.S. Eliot poem last week, and it was one of the hardest things I've ever had to do. Not because I didn't understand it, not because I didn't know where to start, but because I didn't know what to look at. When I'm really into something, I sometimes can't look at one part of it without seeing all the rest as connected. I spent three agonizing days doing nothing other than think about this poem. I skipped five classes. I'm pretty sure one of them was a tutorial. And in the end, I don't even think the essay was that great.

I seem to approach friendship in much the same way. It's hard to think about a friend without also thinking about that time we had a picnic on Center Island, or the songs we sang in grade ten, or the letters we sent during summer holidays when we were in different cities. It's hard to separate old feelings from new observations. It's even harder to see that maybe everything you thought you had between the two of you might be wrong, that the picnics and the letters and the days on the beach might mean nothing to them anymore, because new things are happening to them and days at the beach aren't as important as they used to be.

Sitting in Clarke Hall Pub last night with Chelsea, we started talking about relationships. Admittedly, we were talking about the romantic kind, but it got me to thinking about friendships. In a romantic relationship, you clearly know when it's over. They break up with you or you break it off with them. Clean, clear, and over. But how can you tell when a friendship is over? Do you call them up and tell them, "Sorry, this isn't working for me anymore"? Or do you let it go unsaid, say nothing until it's clear to both of you that you've drifted so far apart that it can't ever be mended?

I read my copy of Eliot's Muder in the Cathedral again yesterday, because it makes me remember lovely things about OAC year, and all the fun we had. And then, I got to the tempters. I always thought that the worst thing about them was that they all told the truth, without softening the words. That was what hurt so much about them, why Thomas felt so horrid, because they said what he knew to be the truth. That was what made them so hard to resist. Well, the third tempter got me yesterday.

"Unreal friendship may turn to real
But real freindship, once ended, cannot be mended.
Sooner shall enmity turn to alliance.
The enmity that never knew friendship
Can sooner know accord."

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