We were taking the same Renaissance Literature course and the same Visual Art course. It was first semester of sophomore year. I don’t remember the first day that I realized the quiet girl in the corner of my art class was the same one sitting across from me in our lopsided Circle of English Class Trust, although I do remember smiling at you in Art because I eventually realized we had the same English class and anyone who likes art and is an English major is good in my book, and wondering if you thought the English professor was secretly totally awesome and inspiring and totally batshit and terrifying the same way I did.
You must have thought the same thing, about people liking English lit and art, because one of those rainy days we spent painting the in the hallway you struck up a conversation with me. It was the start, just as Rick told Louie.
Relationships are interesting things, even more so when you consider the world around them. True, genuine friendships were sacred rarities all the way up to modern times. So often, relationships were driven by interpersonal needs – you have an actual relationship with the merchant who is going to buy your wares or lend you money or marry your daughter and friendships were based on such a value. If there was a friend who you loved and there was no political gain to be had from said relationship – that was a true friend, a sacred friend. In today’s world, we don’t have to have relationships with our bankers or our merchants, so in theory you should be able to choose your friends.
(But still, how often did people become fast friends, best friends in the whole wide world, with the people they lived with in college? It happened to you, it happened to me. It wasn’t by some miraculous all seeing head of housing that knew, just knew it in her BONES, that all of the people on my floor in freshman year were perfect matches for each other, even though we lived with each other all four years. We wanted easy, happy lives and warring with the girls down the hall over who stole whose belt (or boyfriend or blanket) was not going to help. It is true, though, that some of my best friends come from that floor, and I love them dearly.)
Today, we have Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn and blogs (and you know I’m guilty of all but LinkedIn) and so many aspects of friendship have become accoutrements. Or maybe, maybe it’s the other way around. Maybe we’re so focused on being liked and valued and wanted that we use Facebook and Twitter to validate ourselves with how many friends and followers we have. And because we want as many people as possible to like us, to want us, we’re more afraid than ever to say something or be someone who will cause people to dislike us. We are all sweet and cute and craft careful personas of witty awesomeness, so that a lot of the relationships of today are just as political as the ones back in the middle ages. Just instead of being polite and sweet to your butcher, you’re being sweet and polite to the cute kid who sat in your class a couple of semesters ago and you still think is cute. Which, whatever, I’m not going to lambaste anyone for doing that. I think it’s part of the composition of today’s society and our particular generation – I’m careful about what I put out on Facebook because I care about how it’s received. I’m not about to throw any stones when I’m just as guilty. Glass houses, and all that.
It’s hilarious and ironic that you and I use the internet the way we do. Various and sundry are complaining that the internet and all its little ‘networking’ sites are all manifestations of the way interpersonal relationships are becoming less and less personal. No one sits down and has deep conversations for hours on end, they cry. Business writers caution that emails shouldn’t go on for more than a page, which means the letters Liza sent her sister Jane – pages on pages – really are a thing of the past.
But you are my soul friend, one of those sacred rarities “difficult to find but dearly beloved,” that summons me to the good, by offering advice and not being afraid to call me out, but still loves me unconditionally. You are the Dianna to my Anne and because you do not live down the street and through the grove from me, we cannot drink our tea and discuss every afternoon. Instead, The Constantine Papers is a series of love letters between us, that tide us over when you’re in your old city and I’m in my little city, until we can see each other and sit across from one another by a fireplace and drink tea and talk about everything.
