Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Last week marked the beginning of Norooz, it was the first time in years I had put together a Haftsin, a table which features seven objects, each of which has its own specific and ancient meaning. I only managed three in the end – garlic, vinegar and some ripe red apples, along with some other items, unrelated to the Haftsin, but part and parcel of the Norooz experience, including two goldfish and a bunch of golden yellow daffodils. I was spurred on to do it this year, after so long, due to a new found feeling of self confidence and solidification of myself as a man, part of a larger community or family, if you will.
Clik here to view.
My Norooz fish.
My Norooz 2016, although made special by my own efforts and that of friends and family on social media, was tarnished slightly by my having to cancel, last minute, a trip to London, where I was going to celebrate the occasion with a new friend I’d forged a bond with via social media, an amiable and, from what I can see, trust worthy man. My thoughts on this burgeoning friendship are still overwhelmingly positive, despite the lack of actually meeting in the flesh. However, forever being a contemplative soul, something I view both as a benefit and a curse, it got me thinking about friendship, a subject of which I’ve written about several times, and what seems to be a recurring theme with me, something I almost always think about as the seasons shift from the harsh and monotonous ogre of winter, into the fresh and luscious months of spring.
At 26-years-old, soon to be 27 on April 23rd, friendship, those friendships which are as steadfast as the stars still elude me, of course I have my social media friendships, those I’ve made a connection with through mutual interests and so forth, some I know will remain strong and eternal, for example one I’ve developed with a gentleman in Canada, who I will in short describe as an honest, kind, salt of the earth type, who I feel, and hope, will have my back until one of us shuffles off this mortal coil. For the most part, social media friendships are a fragile thing, as they exist on that strange plane of binary and fantasy, a plane which can so often become a digital purgatory, where genuine emotions are altered beyond recognition. One can never tell if a real emotion is felt by the other person I find, at my end it almost always is, which is why digital friendships are such a double-edged sword. They satisfy our need for comfort, validation and that age old desire to simply be liked, but for those of us who invest our time in them, there’s a danger of being let down on a continual basis. For we see the person as a whole, as a living, breathing organism, with their own minds, desires and fragility.
Clik here to view.
Friendships as they should be, in their true form.
My determination to foster friendships that satisfy the mind, heart and soul, where we meet for a drink every Friday, go on adventures together etc, remains iron like. Having suffered from acute anxiety and, as Winston Churchill once described, the black dog of depression, friendships were so difficult to secure and sustain. I have, thank the almighty, been relatively free of such yokes around my neck since the age of 25, now, as I mentioned at the beginning, a confident man, freelancing and meeting people on a regular basis, getting a friendship is still out of reach. Never a man to let knock backs deter me, I will still search for them, for those meaningful and beautiful things which for me are like the Dandelion seeds we blow in the summer, floating off into the distance, seemingly easy to obtain yet in the cold light of reality, unreachable.
All of these feelings are notched up to their maximum when coupled with feelings of romance, of which I am working my way through at the moment, they keep bursting through my soul like eager green shoots in the spring rain, I don’t want them to keep doing this, as my paramour lives several thousand miles away, yet they still do. Although, as so often happens due to my work, not meeting face-to-face, we have had a variety of conversations, via Skype and Facebook, every one of which I’ve treasured, be they long, ebbing and flowing, going off on tangents, to short and shrift. We seem to understand one another on a level which rarely happens with most people I meet, be they male of female, at my end our connection feels like it transcends most I have with others. We are two individuals of the creative sphere, so I’m sure prone to acts of overthinking and using floral language, so overtly and unabashedly Baroque, to describe the simplest of thoughts and feelings.
Clik here to view.
A predictable image to insert when talking about such things, but I couldn’t resist.
I think no matter how old I get, I will succumb to romance, no matter how mature and how beaten down by life I become, romance will ignite the fire of my heart and make that youthful fool rise to the surface. I’m an arrant idiot for it, but when I look at a photograph, and stare into those soft, warm brown eyes, filled with passion, intelligence, creativity and kindness I think of only the ethereal, of being at the pinnacle of life. It’s all encompassing, I hope to God that something happens, somehow I get to be with them, and if I can temper this eruption of romance, and turn into reality, or it just be a friendship I will be satisfied. The only thing that will break my heart is if I don’t see them in the flesh and make my feelings known.
I am sure I’ve opened myself up for an ample amount of ridicule, but I’m not made of porcelain, I’m a strong man with his priorities structured correctly, I’d rip a man’s heart out to defend that which I love and care about deeply, so a few barbed remarks won’t dent the warrior’s armour. Now, as I take the last puff of my hundredth cigarette of the night, and notice my tobacco supplies running low, I will end it here.