Artwork © Richard Spisak

 

Chapter 11

As desirer and desideratum are in flux with the two or more friends possessing both behaviors that are ever waxing and waning, any given “friendship” changes from day to day. This is true even while the parties in seeking to expand the scaffolding around and of course the very structure of self maintain that singular objective of using each other for fuel and redesign of self directly from and under the influence of each other. From this camaraderie, which engenders metamorphosis, greater affinity and similitude form for a time, but only a brief time with the friends ever subject to newer influences. And just as the newest now seems to devour its predecessor, at least in the human mind if not time and space itself, the long-term friend, falling short of ideals and seeming to lean toward commonality loses luster and seems more problematic by contrast to the unknown of the unworn, and untried, with the novel of what might be in another seeming more real than what is.

The friendship ends by the parties feeling that they learned less about themselves through each other than they should and were transformed insufficiently in the company of the other. Under the influence of other sources, they depart from each other, totally unaware of being slightly changed favorably and in some degree cognate in and from the friendship, and more aware of the newer influences than they should. Thus, they feel less amicable and less compatible in each other’s company, and a sense of discomfort at being together any longer. Although new friendship for, or perhaps in part, because of its risk of blowing up in one’s face, brings titillation to the banal, humans long for permanence despite sensing that they use each other and that they get bored in each other so easily, and find that even the longest and closest relationships, unless extremely lucky, according to Aristotle, are, as he says, temporary contracts of pleasure and utility, although they would not refer to it as such. So, given that these temporary unions, shadows of two people that when blended fully delude individuals into the relationship seeming so tangible and real that they themselves often become dwarfed in the process, are almost exclusively quid pro quo relationships, only fools seek the ideal of a close, “permanent” bond in another human being including even those whom we think of as our intimate friends for they project to us merely deeper levels of the shallow. Although they will always be strangers to us, as we to them, while by contrast to more distant friends, acquaintances, and strangers seeming intimate, we should not be strangers of our own lives.

Instead, it should be one of communing with and bringing to the outside world the specters of thought deep in the caverns of self and manifesting those repressed or forgotten feelings and memories that with the catalyst of the analytic mind’s enzymes shape into ideas. Few are solitary beings. Whether that is in large part compunction over failings in the past that have disturbed conscience and do not want to be identified with the self is mere speculation but certainly afraid of themselves they are and seek any noise or commotion that can disturb them from themselves. Thus, addicted to work, society, alcohol, drugs, and “god” in one way or another, they are part of a crusade to disperse deeper self from themselves–work not to be confused with vocation, even if occasionally they overlap, for vocation implies mission in the most secular connotation of the word, and self-actualization is required for that. But then none of this explains why I befriended a hapless individual in Bangkok, ruined myself financially over so many years to see that he did not go to the streets, and why now, homeless as I now am in Honolulu, Hawaii, I still feel obligated to help him. All that I can say (the deeper self sometimes mystifying to oneself no matter how connected one is to it) is that sometimes one encounters situations in which one individual becomes the archetype of human suffering. Sometimes one encounters situations in which turning away would diminish oneself as a person. And this can happen even with someone whom one really has nothing in common with or any intellectual affinity or any other attraction.

Anyhow, as I write this in the state library that is juxtaposed to the palace, wondering, as I often do, what Queen Liliuokalani and her cohorts would have been thinking could restore the monarchy and sovereignty of Hawaii from the American aggressors in those last days, I am even sometimes glad that as a boy the barrage of derision that I experienced by my father and sister–her softball now turning into hardball, her lessons of how to throw a frisbee with one’s wrist now how to parry off the assault on formation of self that a boy needs to go through to be whole which now she and he both were doing to me) for in fleeing from them by bicycling to an empty fairground I learned the art of befriending myself and being entirely alone in this world, an art I am still not great in. It helped me cope with my situation now for on the streets there is no individual or organization one can trust and one must live comfortably within his head.

 

Steven David Justin Sills is a literary writer living in Phuket, Thailand. His book of poetry is in many libraries in the United States and a copy of one book owned by a library was scanned by the Internet Archive. Sills’ work can also be found on the Online Book Page at the University of Pennsylvania. Sills finished his last literary novel The Three Hour Lady over two years ago, and until recently, he was devoting that time to writing a long war poem about what is happening in Ukraine. Most of those 25 poems including his most recent poem are at this particular journal. As his graduate degree is great books of the Western Canon he has been wanting to write his own ethical treatise, and this forum affords him that opportunity.

Richard Spisak began his artistic career as a light artist in the Lumonics Studios of Mel Tanner, a legendary Light Artist. After serving under Jack Horkheimer as a planetarium operator at the Miami Space-Transit Planetarium, he left to begin traveling with Lumist Kenvin Lyman, whose show Dazzleland Studios traveled across America. Richard later worked as a Laserist with LASERIUM and Laser Productions, served as a technical producer for the festival company PACE Concerts, and later as operations Manager and Senior Producer at WWHP and WTCN-TV in Stuart Florida.

Richard writes for Theatre, TV, radio, and the web. He published two short story collections, Two Small Windows, in a Pair of Mirror Doors, and Between the Silences. Followed by his poetry collection 7370 Allen Drive and the recently released STONE POETRY. Richard also produces “POETS of the East,” a televised webcast featuring poets from across the globe.