Rituals

     ... Angus turned to her suddenly and said, "Domenica, why are we doing this? Why are we having all these people round to dinner?"

      It might have been another occasion on which Mallory's reply would have been called for: because they're there, but she said instead: "Friendship."

      He had not expected that answer. "Just that?"

     "Yes. Because a dinner party provides the ideal opportunity to sit with people. To talk to them."

      "You don't think, then, that it's simply a bourgeois ritual?"

      Domenica smiled. "I might have thought that in the past," she said. "No more, though. I now realise, I think, how important these bourgeois rituals are. Or all rituals, for that matter, bourgeois or not."

Friendship

Celebrating Pam's birthday last night reminded me of meeting her almost ten (!) years ago...

"Grown-up women do the same sort of thing that Charlene and I did. Not the counting of moles on each other's backs and comparing toes lengths, maybe. But when they meet and feel a particular sympathy with each other they also feel a need to set out the important information, the big events whether public or secret, and then go ahead to fill in all the blanks between. If they feel this warmth and eagerness it is quite impossible for them to bore each other. They will laugh at the very triviality and silliness of what they're telling, or at the revelation of some appalling selfishness, deception, meanness, sheer badness. There has to be great trust, of course, but that trust can be established at once, in an instant."

What I'm Thankful For This Year

On Friendship

And let your best be for your friend.
If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.
For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?
Seek him always with hours to live.

Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet