forging friendships
I’m lying down on my bed just now, eight minutes before midnight, after chatting with a friend over a call. Usually there’s that tendency to immediately check up on my phone after calling it a night, to skim through my accounts in case there are any messages incoming, but tonight I stare at my hands–the areas where it’s not swallowed by the darkness of the room–and think of how I did so much today, and yet never enough as if everything since August has kept me far from the shore, floating, when all these times I have tried to remain grounded in land.
And connections keep me rooted, planted in the soil I have grown up familiarizing with. But friendships do not meet me in an immediate intersection where, once we cross paths, we would know, as if on cue, that where we are possibly directed will be at the same destination. I notice how my close friends in high school have stayed with me through time and consistency. The more I force myself to be with someone, even in the most passionate manner, my energy runs out, and I’m unable to return back to that part of myself in a short period of time. In a way, I have been dependent on time and constancy bringing the people around me closer. As a freshman, college has reminded me of that penetrating yet embarrassing truth more than ever. I could still trace back the remnants of my awkward, reserved self during our first days of classes, accompanied by the realization that I will have to initiate a conversation, a connection, a link that I haven’t done since my early years of junior high. Do you often feel a tingling sensation in your body, like it’s telling you that you have grown too far behind compared to everyone else?
Here is Rest House by Brandon Shimoda:
I see something moving
in the trees
across the riverIt is convincing me
that I am hungry
and it will feed meI am hungry
I have not eaten since
I saw my mother intactShe was angry
had shapes all over
her facestress and strenuousness
warmth and forgiveness
eternityWhen I rode the subway afterwards
I looked closely maybe longingly
at the people around meand thought, one second separates us
from breathing in
each other’s skin
Late nights always come with a more profound willingness to feel and be more in tune with the waves crashing within my body. If I could only vividly tell you how the last verse washed over me, I would–but just like the poem, bonds blanket almost every line of it. From our own hunger to the contradicting and conflicting relationships we may have, to a single thought that even then, and despite that, “one second separates us / from breathing in / each other’s skin.” I think there’s a kind of openness to a view such as this. Just prior to the sixth verse we are unpeeling ourselves for a connection with the writing about the different kinds of shapes present in the mother’s face. Isn’t that looking with closeness? With intention and intensity so much that it might have sprung from hunger? And might that have become a push, a nudge for longingness of contact, skin-to-skin, eye-to-eye, soul-to-soul? For a what-if?
College and adjusting to a new, diverse space of people will be one of the places I’ll have to try and take root once more. The multitude of trees and plants around me will be ones I’ve never encountered before, but I would like to start my next few days with that kind of acceptance and attention; and that maybe, through effort as well, I will be able to make bonds–ones I have treated with gradual care, hopefully, sustained for a long time. I hope we all do.
No rush, and a lily for you,
Czar